Semantics

LING 200Spring 2006

Overview• Semantic competence• Lexical semantics

– Some meaning relationships– Cross-linguistic variation

• Reference– iconicity– protypes– sense vs. reference

• “semantics”

• Phrasal semantics

Semantic competence• Semantics

– overlaps with morphology, syntax– an important part of linguistics

• What native speakers know about:– meanings of individual morphemes– meanings of heteromorphemic words and

sentences– relationships between meanings

• Challenge of studying semantics– knowing what morphemes, words and sentences

mean

Lexical semantics

• = meanings of morphemes (and words)• Some meaning relations

– Synonymy– Ambiguity– Antonymy– Hyponymy and hypernymy

Synonymy

• If A is synonymous with B, – A and B mean the same thing, A can be

paraphrased by B• (Fairly) synonymous lexical items

– couch = sofa– get = receive– throw up = vomit– put off = postpone

• cf. procrastinate (‘put off due to laziness’)

Ambiguity

• Polysemy vs. homophony• Polysemous morpheme

– meaning1 meaning2– e.g. hard

• “durable, solid”• “difficult”

• Single lexical entry in a dictionary

Homophony

• Homophones– morpheme1 morpheme2

meaning1 meaning2

– e.g. pass (‘I’m going to pass’)• ‘abstain’• ‘succeed’

• Distinct lexical entries in a dictionary

Hyponymy and hypernymy

• If B is a hyponym of A, then– the meaning of B is a special case of A

• If A is a hypernym of B, then– the meaning of A is a more general instance of B

B A

Hyponyms: nouns

Hyponymy: adjectivescolored (‘contains color’)

red green black purple blue yellow

turquoise royal blue

Hyponymy: verbs

cutslice

motatedrive

movedance

hypernymhyponym

Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (p. 184): ‘clarinet, guitar, horn, marimba, piano, trumpet, and violinare hyponyms because they are “musical instruments” but there isn’t a single word meaning “musical instrument” that has these words as its hyponyms.’

Still, piano is a hyponym of musical instrument; etc.

(Generally) productive ways of forming hyponyms

adverbial modification

compounding

adjectival/ sentential modification

strategy

dill pickleroad rage

picklerage

incredibly interestinginteresting

carflower

Japanese carthe flower I picked last night

hyponym

Caveats re adjectival modification• Anti-intersection adjectives

the president (i.e. current)the former president

offerphony offer

$100 billfake $100 bill

is not a hyponym of:

phony offer offer

• ‘Non-intersection’ adjectives

thiefalleged thief

solutionpossible solution

is not necessarily a hyponym of:

thiefalleged thief

alleged thief

?? ??

Caveat re compounding• “Exocentric” compounds

TV showoperasoap opera

carwagonstation wagon

sound systemboxboombox

instead hyponym of:is not a hyponym of:

Cross-linguistic variation in lexicalsemantics

1. How many morphemes are required to express a concept?– ‘conifer branch’

• English: 2 morphemes• Witsuwit’en

– 1 morpheme: [l] ‘branch of conifer’ – cf. -[jischm] ‘branch of deciduous tree’

2. How general is the concept expressed by a morpheme? (How many semantic features does it take to describe the concept?) How are concepts morphologically encoded?

• Witsuwit’en– [tstl’s] ‘paper, letter, book’– [nxw]- ‘our, your (pl.)’, [nj]- ‘your (sg.)’

Cross-linguistic variation in the encoding of kinship concepts

• e.g. ‘parent’s sibling’– Other possible concepts that might also be encoded in a

single morpheme:• sex: not specified, male, female• side of family: not specified, maternal, paternal• 3 x 3 = 9 possible distinct concepts (in addition to ‘parent’s sibling’)

‘parent’s sibling’

paternalmale9maternalmale8not specifiedmale7paternalfemale6maternalfemale5not specifiedfemale4paternalnot specified3maternalnot specified2not specifiednot specified1side of familysex of parent’s sibling

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

ma-thaj--‘father’s brother’

káka-z--‘mother’s brother’

----uncle‘parent’s brother’

pišíš-pits--‘father’s sister’

--

aunt------English

paá-aq’j/-eq’j‘mother’s sister’

----‘parent’s sister’

----‘father’s sibling’

----‘mother’s sibling

----‘parent’s sibling’

SahaptinWitsuwit’en

Reference

• Iconic vs. non-iconic reference• Does the form of a sign (expression)

resemble what it refers to?– spoken languages, rarely– sign languages, more often

Iconic vs. non-iconic reference

BANANA ENGLAND

Prototypical reference• For many common

nouns, the set of possible referents are clustered around a prototype.

• E.g. ‘bird’• Prototypical exemplars

of a category are more readily (quickly, reliably) processed than atypical exemplars.

Reference and prototypes• Prototypes vs. set of possible referents:

– some set overlap possible:• ‘bowl’ vs. ‘cup’

• ‘a few’ vs. ‘several’• ‘blue’ vs. ‘green’

Reference and prototypes

Coreference• Grammatical encoding of reference

– syntax overlaps with semantics• Pronoun form. Reflexive pronouns:

themselveshimself, herself, itself3

yourselvesyourself2

ourselvesmyself1

pluralsingular

Coreference• Joyce burped.

Julia asked if Joyce could excuse herself.• Julia burped.

Julia asked if Joyce could excuse her.

‘herself’ must be coreferential with another NP in the same sentence

‘her’ must not be coreferential with another NP in the same sentence

Sense vs. reference--‘What does [hawláak] mean?’

--‘Let’s ask Virginia Beavert.’vs. ‘Let’s ask someone who speaks Sahaptin.’

Sense vs. reference• Reference (‘extension’): identity of real

world object• Sense (‘intension’): (compositionally

determined) meaning• Same referent, unequal sense

– ‘Toshiyuki Ogihara’ • has no sense (to an English speaker, other than

“Japanese name”)– ‘the semanticist on the faculty in the Dept. of

Linguistics, UW’– Proper names characteristically have a referent

but no sense

Sense vs. reference

• Sense without reference is possible– ‘the first female president of the United States’– ‘the B wing elevator in Padelford Hall’

“Semantics”• To non-linguist native speakers of English, if

two expressions differ in “semantics”, the expressions have the same referent but differ in sense (as pointed out to me by Prof. Ogihara)

– "One of my pet peeves is when people say the school district, instead of our school district. Maybe it's just semantics, but it makes the community sound powerless, and we're not."

Russ Wood, president of the Mountain View-Whisman School Board (example from the internet)

The Seattle Times, 11-1-2005

Sentence (phrasal) semantics

• How do the meanings of lexical items combine? – Metonyms, metaphor– Compositionality and lack thereof (idioms)– Anomaly

• Entailment

Metonyms and metaphor

• Metonym: ‘substitutes for the object that is meant, the name of an attribute or concept associated with that object.’ (Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams p. 184)

– redcoat: ‘a British soldier in a uniform with a red coat, as during the American Revolution’ (New World Dict. of the Amer. Lg.)

– soap opera: ‘a daytime radio or television serial drama of a highly melodramatic, sentimental nature: so called since many original sponsors were soap companies’ (New World Dict. of the Amer. Lg.)

– redneck: ‘Exceptions [to lexical category predictability] are compounds like redneck, which is a type of person not a type of neck. Their meaning cannot be predicted by rule.’ (Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams p. 184)

• [Slang] a poor, white, rural resident of the South: often, a somewhat derogatory term [from the characteristic sunburned neck acquired in the fields by farm laborers] (New World Dict. of the Amer. Lg.)

• redneck a metonym; meaning not entirelypredictable by rule

Metaphor

• ‘an expression that ordinarily designates one concept---its literal meaning---but is used to designate another concept, thus creating an implicit comparison.’– ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.’

Idioms/proverbs• Institutionalized metaphors

– When does a metaphor become so widespread as to become an idiom?

• Have two (or more) meanings– literal (compositional) meaning– figurative (noncompositional) meaning, a.k.a. ‘free

translation’

Some English idioms and proverbs

‘to say something stupid, regrettable and/or insensitive’

VPto put one’s foot in one’s mouth

‘to insist on minute, possibly unimportant detail’

VPto split hairs

VP

phrasal category

‘to become zealously convinced (about something)’

to get religion

noncompositional meaning

idiom

‘an easy, straightforward time with future endeavors’

NPfair winds and following seas

‘Don’t ask questions/raise issues that could create more problems than would be solved by the original question.’

SLet sleeping dogs lie.

‘not going to happen/come to fruition’

APdead in the water

NP

NP

‘illegal trading or exchange’black market

‘termination of street with no connection to another street’

dead end

Some Tsek’ene idioms

NP

VP

VP

phrasal category

‘slow, clumsy hands’

‘frog hand’[thehkhahče ilà]

‘he/she criticized me’

‘he/she put my head in the water’

[thìtshìsniõ]

‘he/she/it died’‘it wagged its tail’

[tche nikl]

noncompositional meaning

literal meaningidiom

Some Witsuwit’en idioms

S

NP

VP

VP

phrasal category

noncompositional meaning

literal meaning

idiom

‘there was a hail storm’‘the devil fought with his wife’

[ljap tat p jininje]

‘large wet snowflake’‘songbird backpack’

[c’t’xwts’j il]

‘he/she/it is used to you’‘he/she/it likes your smell’

[njzil utilj]

‘she is pregnant’‘he/she stays home’

[j ste]

Anomaly• Semantically ill-formed phrases

– meanings that cannot combine with each other– anomalous expression = ‘oxymoron’

• Sign in a London department store:Bargain basement upstairs

• On a church door:'This is the gate of Heaven. Enter Ye all by this door.' (This door is kept locked because of the draught. Please use side door.)

• Outside a disco:Smarts is the most exclusive disco in town. Everyone welcome.

– source of many of Jay Leno’s “Headlines”

• Semantic well-formedness independent of syntactic well-formedness – #Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• # = semantically ill-formed

– Jabberwocky (see p. 202 of Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams)

Entailment• If X entails Y, then whenever X is true Y is

also true.– X: Last night I did the dishes and straightened

the living room. entails:• Y: Last night I did the dishes.

– X: A contestant was fired by Donald Trump.entails:• Y: Someone was fired by Donald Trump.

Entailment• Mutual entailment = complete synonymy• ‘Put off’ is synonymous with ‘postpone’

– If– They put off the wedding until June. entails– They postponed the wedding until June.

and– They postponed the wedding until June. entails– They put off the wedding until June.

– Then– They postponed the wedding until June.

is synonymous with– They put off the wedding until June.

Predicting entailment

1. Factive verbs: be sorry, regret, stop

Factive verbs entail the truth of their complements.

• I’m sorry that the Seahawks lost. entails• The Seahawks lost.

• I regret that I put my foot in my mouth. entails• I put my foot in my mouth.

• When did you stop beating your ___? entails• You were beating your ___.

• Complements of factive verbs cannot be ‘cancelled’– Julia is sorry the party is over (#but it’s actually

still in full swing).• Complements of non-factive verbs can be

cancelled– Julia said the party is over (but it’s actually still

in full swing).– Julia thinks the party is over (but it’s actually still

in full swing).

Predicting entailment

2. Dictum de OmniIf sentences X and Y differ only in that X

contains a hyponym (special case) of Y, then X generally entails Y.

Dictum de Omni

dill pickle is a hyponym of pickleX: Dave ate a dill pickle. entails

Y: Dave ate a pickle.

Japanese car is a hyponym of carX: Prof. Ogihara bought a Japanese car. entails

Y: Prof. Ogihara bought a car.

Predicting entailment3. Dictum de nulloIf sentences X and Y differ only in that X contains a

hypernym (general case) found in Y, then X generally entails Y.

And the sentences containing X and Y are (any of)– Negative sentences– Conditional sentences– Sentences containing ‘all’, ‘every’; habitual sentences

Negative sentences• Seattle is a hypernym of Ballard• X: ‘Bill Gates doesn't live in Seattle.’

entails• Y: ‘Bill Gates doesn't live in Ballard.’

Conditional sentences

• sports car is a hypernym of German sports car

• X: If Bill bought a sports car, then it must be a nice car. entails

• Y: If Bill bought a German sports car, then it must be a nice car.

Sentences with 'every'

• boxing match is a hypernym of celebrity boxing match

• X: Darva Conger watched every boxing match. entails

• Y: Darva Conger watched every celebrity boxing match.

Habitual sentences

• boxing is a hypernym of celebrity boxing• X: Darva Conger enjoys boxing. entails• Y: Darva Conger enjoys celebrity boxing.

Entailment summary

• Possible to predict when some sentences entail other sentences.

• Depends on– whether sentence contains a factive verb or not– which sentence contains hypernym vs.

hyponym– type of sentence

• positive• negative, conditional, ‘every’, habitual

Semantics summary• Semantics overlaps with morphology, syntax• Semantic competence • Lexical semantics

– Cross-linguistic variation in the number of morphemes to encode concepts

– Semantic relations: antonymy, synonymy, ambiguity, hyponymy, entailment

• Reference, coreference, reference vs. sense, “semantics”

• There are both compositional and non-compositional aspects of linguistic meaning

• Entailment