This document provides an overview of semantics and discusses key concepts in semantic theory. It begins by defining semantics as the study of meaning in language. It then discusses some of the challenges in developing a semantic theory, including accounting for compositionality, distinguishing linguistic from world knowledge, and handling contextual meaning and individual variation. The document also examines various semantic relationships at the word level, such as synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, polysemy, and metonymy.

1. Week 4 Semantics
Russell Rodrigo, M.Ed.

2. Outline
1. What is Semantics
2. Semantics in relation to other components
of Grammar
3. What should a semantic theory look like?
4. Semantic Relationships

3. Part 1
WHAT IS
SEMANTICS?

4. Some things we know
 These sentences describe the same situation:
 The small blue circle is in front of the square.
 The square is behind the small blue circle.
We are also capable of verifying that both sentences are true in this
particular situation.
This is because we know what the world must be like in order for these
sentences to be true.

5. Some things we know
 We know that the following sentence can mean more than one
thing (it is ambiguous):
 She drove past the bank.
This seems to be related to our knowledge of what
bank denotes.

6. Some things we know
We also know that sentence two follows from sentence
1 (technically: sentence 1 entails sentence 2)
1. John murdered the president.
2. The president is dead.
 In this particular case, it seems to be related to the
meaning of murder.

7. Semantics
 Usually defined as that part of Linguistics
that deals with meaning
word meaning
sentence meaning

8. Semantics
 In linguistic terminology the word semantics is used to
designate the science of word-meaning.
 A clearer definition of the meaning (or meanings) of
a word is said to contribute to removing the
"dogmatism" and "rigidity" of language and to make
up for the lack of emotional balance among people
which is ultimately due to language.

9. Grammar
Grammar (in the linguist’s sense) is a
characterisation of the knowledge of a
speaker/hearer.
We ask: when a speaker “knows” a language, what
does she know exactly?
The linguist’s task is therefore to characterise what
it takes for a speaker/hearer to produce and
comprehend her language.

10. Semantics as part of grammar
Semantics is part of a speaker’s (listener’s) linguistic
knowledge.
Therefore, semantics is part of grammar.
Speakers have some internalised knowledge
such that:
They understand what other people mean.
They are able to say what they mean.

11. Knowledge of language
is productive
Open any book…
 How many of the sentences in it have you seen/heard before?
 Some, but certainly not all of them.
 But even if the sentences are completely “new”, you are still able to
understand them.
To characterise our knowledge of language, we need to
characterise this ability people have to decode any new
utterance, so long as it conforms to the grammar of their
language.

12. The problem of knowledge
 Chomsky (1986) identified this as Plato’s
problem:
 A lot of what we hear or say is new.
 How do we manage to understand and produce such
an infinite variety of things, even if we’ve never heard
them before?
 This is the basic motivation for much linguistic work
since the 1950’s.

13. The problem of knowledge
Until the 1960s, the role of semantics in grammar
was somewhat obscure.
What can semantics contribute which is not
accounted for by other areas?
syntax (phrase structure)
morphology (word structure)
phonology (sound structure)
…

14. Katz and Fodor (1963)
 an early attempt to characterise what is required of a semantic
theory
 “semantics takes over the explanation of the speaker's ability to
produce and understand new sentences at the point where
grammar leaves off” (p. 172-3)
 K&F argued that syntax and phonology alone cannot give a full
account of a speaker’s knowledge of language.
 e.g. the sentences The man bit the dog and The dog bit the
man are structurally identical, but differ in meaning
 (NB: K&F assume that syntax has no bearing on meaning as
such)

15. Language and the world
 But in characterising knowledge of meaning, we
also have the problem of distinguishing linguistic
knowledge from world knowledge
 E.g. What is the meaning of the word man or
ostrich?
 Is your knowledge of the meaning independent of your
experience of the world?
 Are you born with an innate knowledge of such words?

16. Knowledge of language and
the world
semantics
concepts/
thoughts
things
&
situations
How do we account for
the relationship between
words and concepts?
How do we decode the
meaning of complex
sentences?
How is linguistic meaning
related to the world?

17. Knowledge of language and
the world
How do we account for the
relationship between words
and concepts?
How do we decode the
meaning of complex
sentences?
How is linguistic meaning
related to the world?
lexical semantics
lexical semantics
&
sentential semantics
sentential
semantics

18. The problem of knowledge
In designing a semantic theory, we need to account
for productivity
 We know a lot of words (thousands) and their meanings.
This is our mental lexicon.
 We can create an infinite number of sentences, using
grammatical rules of our language.
 The meaning of sentences is derived from the
meaning of their component words and the way
they’re combined.

19. Compositionality
The guiding principle to explaining the
productivity of meaning is the Principle of
Compositionality
The meaning of a sentence is a function of the
meaning of its component words and the way
they’re combined.
Often attributed to the philosopher Gottlob
Frege.

20. Semantics in
relation to other
components of
grammar

21. Meaning and grammar (I)
 In some theories, such as Generative
grammar, the language faculty is divided
into modules.
 This view emphasises distinct roles played
by different components.
 There is a separate component for
meaning, completely unrelated to syntax or
phonology.
phonology syntax semantics

22. Is this view justifiable?
 It seems clear that some grammatical facts must take meaning
into account.
 Jake opened the door.
 The door opened.
 The girl kissed Steve.
 Steve kissed.
 It looks like the meaning of the verbs affects their syntactic
behaviour!
Open is a change of state verb
(Transitive to Intransitive Verb)
Kiss is not a change of
state verb.
(remains Transitive verb)

23. Meaning and grammar (II)
 An alternative view, found for example in Cognitive
Grammar, argues that meaning is inseparable from the other
components.
 In this framework, people often argue also that linguistic
knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge cannot be
separated.
phonology syntax
semantics

24. What should a
semantic theory
look like?

25. An example situation
So did you like
the food?
You made
great black
coffee.

26. Requirements for our theory (I)
What kinds of knowledge do you need to understand
a reply such as you made great black coffee:
 Word meaning:
 black, coffee, great, make
 Phrasal and sentence meaning (Compositionality):
 black + coffee
 (great + black + coffee) + (make + PAST)

27. Requirements for the theory
(II)
You also need to consider contextualised meaning:
 The pronoun you means person of unspecified gender
whom the speaker is addressing
 Only makes sense in a context where there is an
interlocutor.

28. A first attempt
 The task:
 Design a theory that will explain a speaker’s semantic
knowledge, i.e.
 Word meaning
 Sentence meaning
 …
 The solution (take 1):
 Suppose we just claimed that meaning is about knowing
“dictionary definitions”

29. Problem 1: Circularity
Knowing the meaning of a word = knowing the definition
 E.g. coffee = a beverage consisting of an infusion of
ground coffee beans
 We need to know the meaning of the words making up the
definition (infusion, coffee beans)!
 This involves giving further definitions…
 Where would this process stop?
 The problem here is trying to define word meaning using
other words…

30. Problem 2: World knowledge vs.
Linguistic Knowledge
 Suppose you think of coffee as:
 black, hot, bitter…
 Suppose I think of coffee as:
 black, hot, ground from coffee beans, grown in Brazil…
 Which of the two conceptions is correct?
 Which of these aspects belongs to language, and
which are “encyclopaedic knowledge”?
 How much do we need to agree on in order to
understand each other’s uses of the word?

31. Problem 3: Individual
differences
 Suppose we agree that coffee is typically black.
 We might not agree precisely on the true meaning of the word black:
 How dark must something be to qualify?
 When does black become dark brown?
 People often differ on the boundaries
 This doesn’t seem to stop them understanding each other.
 Two possible goals of a semantic theory:
 to identify aspects of meaning independent of individual variation
 to account for how speakers manage to understand each other even where
there is such variation

32. Interim Summary
Thinking of meaning as “definition” is
problematic because:
1. Definitions are linguistic, and so their components
will themselves need definition.
 Therefore, we need to try to formulate our account of
meaning without recourse to words.
2. People won’t necessarily agree on definitions.

33. The need for a metalanguage
 To meet these problems, we need to characterise linguistic meaning
independently of words:
 This involves using a semantic metalanguage
 A way of “translating” meaning into a form that is language-
neutral.
 We might assume that speakers have a stock of concepts in their
heads
 E.g. the meaning of coffee is the concept COFFEE
 The concept is not tied to its “English” usage. A Maltese speaker
has the same concept when she uses kafé
 Such concepts might be argued to exist in a speaker’s mental
lexicon

34. Problem 4: Context
 The phrase you made great black coffee seems to
acquire new shades of meaning in different
contexts:
 You’re a hopeless cook, but at least, the coffee was OK…
 You completely failed to impress me…
 Are such context-dependent effects part of
semantics?

35. Semantics vs. pragmatics
 Many linguists make a distinction between
 Literal/conventionalised meaning
 “core meaning”, independent of context
 This belongs to semantics proper
 Speaker meaning & context
 What a speaker means when they say something, over and above the
literal meaning.
 This and other “contextual” effects belong to pragmatics
 NB. The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is not hard and fast
 Is the context-dependent meaning of you a matter for semantics or
pragmatics?

36. Summary
 Semantics is part of linguistic knowledge.
 This is productive and systematic.
 Compositionality of meaning helps us to explain how people can
interpret a potentially infinite number of sentences.
 Theories of linguistic meaning must account for distinctions
between:
 Linguistic knowledge and world knowledge
 Literal meaning vs contextualised or non-literal meaning

37. Part 2
Semantic
Relationships

38. Semantic Relationships
Semantic relationships are the associations that
there exist between the meanings of words
(semantic relationships at word level), between the
meanings of phrases, or between the meanings of
sentences (semantic relationships at phrase or
sentence level).

39. Semantic Relationships at Word
Level
1. Synonymy
2. Antonymy
3. Homonymy
4. polysemy
5. metonymy.

40. Synonymy
 is the semantic equivalence between lexical
items.
big = large
hide = conceal
small = little
couch = sofa
to begin = to start
kind = courteous
beginning = start
to cease = to stop
fast = quickly = rapidly

41. Antonymy
 Antonymy is the semantic relationship that exists
between two (or more) words that have opposite
meanings.
 Antonymous pairs of words usually belong to the
same grammatical category (i.e., both elements are
nouns, or both are adjectives, or both are verbs, and
so on).

42. There are three major types of
antonyms:
1. Complementary or contradictory antonyms
 They are pairs of words in which one member has a certain
semantic property that the other member does not have.
 Therefore, in the context(s) in which one member is true, the
other member cannot be true.
 E.g., male/female, married/unmarried, complete/incomplete,
alive/dead, present/absent/ awake/asleep.
 It is said that these pairs of antonyms exhibit an either/or kind
of contrast in which there is no middle ground.

43. There are three major types of
antonyms:
2. Relational antonyms
 They are pairs of words in which the presence of a certain
semantic property in one member implies the presence of
another semantic property in the other member.
 In other words, the existence of one of the terms implies the
existence of the other term.
 For example:
 over/under, buy/sell, doctor/patient, teacher/pupil, stop/go,
employer/employee, taller/shorter, cheaper/more
expensive.

44. There are three major types of
antonyms:
3. Gradable or scalar antonyms
 They are pairs of words that are contrasted with respect to
their degree of possession of a certain semantic property.
 Each term represents or stands for an end-point (or
extreme) on a scale (e.g., of temperature, size, height,
beauty, etc.); between those end-points there are other
intermediate points (i.e., there is some middle ground)
 E.g., hot/cold, big/small, tall/short, good/bad, strong/weak,
beautiful/ugly, happy/sad, fast/slow.

45. Homonymy
 Homonymy is the relationship that exits between two (or more) words which
belong to the same grammatical category, have the same spelling, may or
may not have the same pronunciation, but have different meanings and origins.
Examples:
 to lie (= to rest, be, remain, be situated in a certain position) and to lie (= not to
tell the truth);
 to bear (= to give birth to) and to bear (= to tolerate);
 bank (= the ground near a river) and bank (= financial institution);
 lead [li…d] (= the first place or position, an example behavior for others to copy)
and lead [led] (= heavy metal);
 bass [beIs] (= musical instrument) and bass [bœs] (= edible fish).

46. Homonymy
 It can also give rise to lexical ambiguity.
 For example, in the following sentences it is almost
impossible to know the intended meanings of bank
and bear. Notice the following sentences.
1. John went to the [bœnk] (the financial institution or the
ground by the river?)
2. Mary can’t [be´r] (have or tolerate?) children.

47. Hyponymy
 We say that the term whose meaning is included in the meaning of the
other term(s) is the general term. Linguists usually refer to it as a
superordinate or hypernym.
 The term whose meaning includes the meaning of the other term is the
specific term; linguists usually refer to it as a hyponym. If the meaning of
a superordinate term is included in the meaning of several other more
specific words, the set of specific terms which are hyponyms of the same
superordinate term and are called co-hyponyms.

48. Polysemy
 Polysemy is the semantic relationship that exists
between a word and its multiple conceptually and
historically related meanings.
 foot = 1. part of body; 2. lower part of something
 plain = 1. clear; 2. unadorned; 3. obvious.
 nice = 1. pleasant; 2. kind; 3. friendly; etc.
The different meanings of a word are not
interchangeable; in fact, they are context-specific.

49. Metonymy
 Metonymy is the semantic relationship that exists
between two words (or a word and an expression) in
which one of the words is metaphorically used in place
of the other word (or expression) in particular contexts
to convey the same meaning.
 Examples:
 "The pen is mightier than the sword,"
 The "pen" stands in for "the written word."
 The "sword" stands in for "military aggression and force."

50. Metonymy Examples
1. The suits - in place of business people
2. Silver fox - for an attractive older man
3. The name of a church - used in place of its individual
members
4. The name of a sports team - used in place of its individual
members
5. The White House - in place of the President or others who
work there
 The White House will be announcing the decision around
noon today.

51. Word meaning:
Expressions
1.Metaphor
2.Idiom
3.Slang

52. Metaphor
 a figure of speech
in which a word or
phrase is applied to
an object or action
to which it is not
literally applicable.

53. Metaphor Ambiguity
1. Dr. Jones is a butcher.
 Jones is the name of a physician who also slaughters
animals and/or sells meats.
 Dr. Jones is a harmful, possibly murderous doctor, who
likes to operate on people unnecessarily.
2. John is a snake in the grass.
 John is the name of a snake that is in the grass.
 John is a deceitful person who pretends to be a friend.

54. Idioms
 Idioms and idiomatic expressions are phrases or sayings that do not have a
literal meaning.
Examples:
1. Maria felt like a fish out of water on the first day of school.
 Maria felt different, as if she didn't belong.
2. He didn't have his coat on, and he caught a cold.
 He got sick.
3. Last night my mom lost her temper.
 She was very angry.
4. I think that you will get a kick out of the movie.
 You will enjoy watching the movie.
5. I let the cat out of the bag and told her that I was moving.
 I told the secret.

55. Slang
 a type of language that consists of words and
phrases that are regarded as very informal, are
more common in speech than writing, and are
typically restricted to a particular context or group
of people.
 "Chicken" is slang for someone who isn't very brave.

56. Examples of Old-Fashioned Slang
 Wallflower: shy
 Don’t have a cow: To tell someone to calm down, The
Simpsons 19802.
 “Don’t have a cow, mom! I didn’t eat all the ice cream.”
Examples of Evolving Slang
 Busted: Old: getting caught doing something wrong,
Now: “ugly.”
 Hip: (very fashionable in 20th century, jazz and beatnik
culture in 40s & 50s, “hipster,” meaning a self-aware artsy
person.

57. Portmanteau Slang
 Frenemy: “gigantic” and “enormous”
 Bromance: “brother” and “romance”
 Ginormous: “gigantic” and “enormous”
Modern Slang
 Basic: A put-down describing someone or something that’s not very
interesting or highly evolved.
 Bae: A term of endearment, usually for romantic partners, but possibly
for close friends as well.
 On point: outstanding, perfectly executed
 Dead: Overwhelmed, unable to keep up
 Salty: Angry or bitter about something
 Fam: A group of close friends.
 Throw shade: To insult or say something unkind about someone.

58. Worksheet
Answers
I.
1. Synonymy
2. Antonymy: contradictory
3. Antonymy: relational
4. Antonymy: gradable
5. Homonymy
6. Hyponymy
7. Polysymy
8. Metonymy
9. Hyponymy
10. Polysymy
11. Homonymy
12. Antonymy: relational
13. Antonymy: gradable
14. Antonymy: contradictory
15. Synonymy
16. homonymy
II.
1. Metaphor
2. Slang
3. Idiom
4. Slang
5. Idiom
6. Slang
7. Metaphor
8. idiom

59. Part 3
1. Naked/undressed
2. Ate
3. Imperfectly
4. Illegally
5. Not recently/a long time ago
6. Past
7. Unnecessary
8. Before
9. A few
10. Impatiently/anxiously
11. Not ready
12. two/too
13. Synonymy
14. Antonymy
15. hate/hatred
16. Expressed
17. Excitement
18. Homonymy
19. hyponymy