Week 10
Ch.5 palmer
5.1 Some simple logic
1. Some of the relations are
logical(or semi-logical kind), so
it is useful to formalize them
by a simplified form of
predicate calculus.
Ex/John is a man
PREDICATION of the individual
John that he has the property
of being a man.
*M(a),
M stands for the predicate 'is a
man'
and a refers to the individual
'John'.
This symbolism can be
extended to deal with relations
where more than one
individual is concerned.
* Thus John loves Maty
may be symbolized as L(a,b),
L stands for the predicate loves
a and b for 'John' and 'Mary'.
*The difference between this
and the previous formula is
that we have 2 ARGUMENTS
not one(a and b).
*the arguments are ordered,
since John loves Mary (L(a,b))
is not the same as Mary loves
John (h(b,a)).
* Other predicates may take
even more arguments.
Ex/ John gave Mary a book.
Symbolized as G(a,b,c).to show
relations between sentences
(or propositions).
Thus, when we say
John is a bachelor, means he is
unmarried.
*B(a) → U(a)
→ indicates entailment
B stands for 'bachelor'
U for 'unmarried'
the whole formula says that
John is a bachelor entails John
is unmarried.
*to discuss the relation
between bachelor
and unmarried, being a
bachelor entails being
unmarried for any individual
not only John.
*the symbols a, b and c
(individual constants),refer to
specific individuals, while
x, y, z INDIVIDUAL VARIABLES
refer to any individual * there
is also the Universal quantifier
Ɐ ('for all').
* Ɐ x (B(x) — > U(x)),
Is read 'For all X,
if X is a bachelor, x is
unmarried'.
*to treat unmarried as 'not-
married', can be done by using
the sign for negation, ~:
(Ɐx (B(x) — >~ M(x))
M stands for 'married'
*Where we have predicates
with 2 or more arguments
(2-and many-place predicates),
we can regard the predicates
as expressing relations
between the arguments.
*With 2-place predicates the
relations may be characterised
in terms of being
Symmetric
Transitive
REFLEXIVE.
* symmetric relation holds for
the arguments in both
directions, i.e.:
if for a relation R, it is the
case that
Ɐx >Ɐy(R(X,y) —>~ R(y,x)).
Ex/(be married to) and cousin:
if John is married to Mary,
Mary is married to John, and, if
Bill is Fred's cousin, Fred is
Bill's cousin.
* A relation is transitive if, for3
arguments x,y and z,
the relation that holds both
for x and y and for y and z,
also holds for x and z, e.g.
ⱯxⱯyⱯz(R(x,y)and(R(y,z)) —>
(R(x,z).
*Many of the spatial terms are
transitive - if John is in
front of Harry and Harry is in
front of Bill, John is also in
front of Bill.
*The same is true for behind,
above, below, north of, south
of and inside.
*This does not hold for
opposite, which is symmetrical
(if No. 21 is opposite No. 22,
No. 22 is opposite No. 21), but
not transitive. (the sense of
used here is completely
different in grammar ).
*A relation is reflexive if it
relates an argument to itself
Ɐx (R(x,x)) can be exemplified
by equal or resemble {Four
equals four, John resembles
himself).
* (These words express
relations that are symmetric
and transitive too.)
*Relations that can never be
symmetric, transitive or
reflexive are asymmetric,
intransitive and irreflexive.
* A relation that is all three of
these is that of father of
since :
(1) if x is father of y,
y cannot be father of x
(2) if y is father of z,
x cannot be father of z,
(3) x cannot be father of x.
*Notice however, that a
relation that is not symmetric,
transitive or reflexive (e.g. like)
is not necessarily asymmetric,
intransitive or irreflexive. For
(i) if x likes y, y may (or may
not) like x,
(2) if y likes z, x may (or may
not) like z,
(3) x may (or may not) like x.
……………………………………………….
5.2 Hyponymy
1. hyponymy refers to the class
itself, and involves the notion
of inclusion in the sense that
tulip, rose are included in
flower.
lion and elephant in are
mammal (or animal).
Similarly scarlet is included in
red.
* Inclusion is thus a matter of
class membership. The 'upper'
term is the superordinate and
the 'lower' term the hyponym.

*There is not always a
superordinate term for
hyponyms.
Lyons (1963: 70-1) observed
that in Classical Greek there is
a superordinate term to cover
a variety of professions and
crafts, 'carpenter', 'doctor',
'flute', 'player', 'shoemaker,'
etc., but none in English.
*The nearest possible term is
craftsman, but that would not
include doctor, flute player or
helmsman.
* Similarly, and strangely,
there is no superordinate term
for all colour words, red, blue,
green, white, etc. ; the term
coloured usually excludes
black and white (and grey too),
or else (used to refer to race),
means 'non-white.'
*The same term may appear in
several places in the hierarchy.
This is, possible only if it is
polysemic (several meanings)
*in one of its meanings it may
actually be superordinate to
itself in another meaning
)though we should usually
avoid using both terms in the
same context).
*Thus animal may be used
(1) in contrast with vegetable
to include birds, fishes, insects
as well as mamals.
(2)in the sense of 'mammal' to
contrast with birds, fishes
and insects, to include both
humans and beasts,
(3) in the sense of 'beast' to
contrast with human.
*Thus it occurs 3 times in the
hierarchical classification of
nature. ‫رسمة‬
*There is a similar situation
with the word dog.
The word sheep is used for all
creatures of a certain species;
it is the superordinate term of
ewe, lamb,ram, etc.
* There are similar terms pig
for sow, boar, piglet and horse
for stallion, mare, colt,etc.
*But the superordinate term
for dogs is dog, though dog is
also the hyponym as distinct
from bitch.
*We can avoid the ambiguity
of dog by using the term male',
male dog would be the
hyponym to contrast with
bitch.
*We can also form
hyponymous sets where no
single-word hyponyms exist in
English in a similar way, e.g.
giraffe, male giraffe, female
giraffe, baby giraffe.
*The terms cattle and poultry
are a little odd in that, though
they are superordinate.‫رسمة‬
*they are used only for plural
reference (though, we need
the superordinate term quite
commonly for the plural).
Thus, though we may say
Those are cattle to include
Those are cows.
Those are hulls, we have no
single term to put in the frame
That is a — .
The most likely term here
would be cow.
(We might find it difficult to
say That is a cow of a bull, but
would not be unhappy with
the definition of a bull as a
male cow.)
With poultry the situation
seems to vary according to
interest and dialect.
The terms cock (or cockerel
and, in America, rooster), hen
and chick are available, but
many people use hen or
chicken as the superordinate
term, though would not, I
suspect, ever wish to refer to
the male bird as a hen. In my
own native dialect there is no
problem.
- the superordinate term is
fowl.
*hyponymy relations vary from
l. to l.
Ex/ Greek has a superordinate
term to include a variety of
occupations.
Ex/ in German 'potato'
Kartoffel
is not included among
'vegetables' Gemiise.
*Hyponymy involves
entailment.
*To say This is a tulip entails
This is a flower, and This is
scarlet entails This is red.
*We can formalize the relation
between tulip Sind flower as
V)c(T(x )—>F(x)), though such
a formula by itself will not
bring out the hierarchical
classification involved in
hyponymy, for since a tulip and
a flower are also plants,
we can say
Vx:(T(x^- )
P(x)) and
Vx(F(x) -^ P(x)), but it must not
follow from this that tulip and
flower are both co-hyponyms
of plant.
* We need further to specify
that flower is an immediate
hyponym of plant and that
tulip is an immediate hyponym
of flower.
*This kind of analysis forms the
basis of Carnap's MEANING
POSTULATES, where it is
suggested that the meaning
of lexical items can be stated in
terms of such entailments.
*Thus, as we saw, x is a
bachelor entails x is unmarried
(Vx(B(x)
~ ^-M(x))).
*In this sense, of course, being a
bachelor is hyponymous to being
unmarried. Meaning postulates thus
essentially treat hyponymy as the basic
sense relation.
5.3 Synonymy
*SYNONYMY is used to mean
'sameness of meaning'.
*It is obvious that for the
dictionary-maker many sets of
words have the same meaning;
they are synonymous, or are
synonyms of one another.
*This makes it possible to
define gala as festivity or
mavis as thrush, though there
is Uttle use in this method if
neither word is known to the
reader, e.g. if hoatzin is
defined as stink-bird; or neve
as fim.
Of course, dictionaries seldom
rely solely on synonymy, but
add descriptive details to
enlighten the reader.
*We can, in fact,define
synonymy as symmetric
hyponymy.
*Thus, if mavis+ thrush are
synonymous, we can say that
all mavises are thrushes and all
thrushes are mavises
Vx(M(x) -> T(x)) and
Vx(T(x) — > M(x)),
But this does not solve the
many practical problems that
we must face.
*It has often been suggested
that English is particularly rich
in synonyms for the historical
reason that its vocabulary has
come from2 different sources,
from Anglo-Saxon on the
one hand and from French,
Latin and Greek on the other.
*Since E. is considered to be a
Germanic language from a
historical point of view, with
Anglo-Saxon as an earlier stage
of its development, the 'Anglo-
Saxon' words are often
considered to be 'native' while
those from French, Latin or
Greek are 'foreign', 'borrowed'
from these l.
*But the terms' native' and
'foreign' are misleading. For
whatever their origins, most of
the words are an essential+
wholly natural part of the E. l.;
moreover, even some of the
'native' words may well have
been 'borrowed' from some
other l. at some time in the
more remote past.
* Unfortunately, there are
often moves to remove the
'foreign' element from l.
*Frenchmen deplore'Franglais'
(the E.words that are now
common in colloquial French),
while the Welsh spend time
and scholarship to find
substitutes for the 'E.' words in
the l., though they are
quite happy to retain the
'Latin' words that entered an
earlier form of the l. at the
time of the Roman Empire.
…………………………………...........
*Nevertheless, it is true that
there are pairs of 'native' and
'foreign' words.
brotherly and fraternal,
buy and purchase,
world and universe, etc.
* The 'native'words are often
shorter and less learned; four-
letter words (in the quite
literal sense) are mostly from
Anglo-Saxon.
*There are triples, one 'native',
one from French,one directly
from Latin - kingly, royal, regal.
Royal which is of a French
origin is more common.
*There are no real synonyms,
no 2 words have exactly the
same meaning. It is impossible
for 2 words with exactly
the same meaning would both
survive in a l.
*there are at least 5 ways in
which possible synonyms can
be seen to differ.
First, some sets of synonyms
belong to different dialects of
the l.
ex/the term fall is used in the
US + in some western counties
of Britain where others would
use autumn.
*The works of dialectologists
are full of such synonyms.
*They are especially interested
in the words to do with
farming; depending where you
live you will say
cowshed, cowhouse or
byre, haystack,
hayrick or haymow.
*Even the domestic tap is
either a faucet or a spigot in
most of the US.
It not a matter of semantics
but their status is similar to the
translation equivalents
of,say,E. and French.
* It is simply a matter of people
speaking different forms of the
l. having different vocabulary
items.
Secondly, there is a similar but
a problematic situation, with
the words that are used in
different styles.
Ex/A nasty smell might be, in
the appropriate setting, an
obnoxious effluvium or an
'orrible stink. The former is, of
course,jocularly very 'posh',
and the latter colloquial.
Similar trios though not with
quite the same styhstic
characteristics, but differing
rather in degrees of formality)
are gentleman, man
and chap, pass away, die and
pop off.
These are more difficult
to deal with because there is a
far less clear distinction
between the styles than
between the geographically
defined dialects and, there is a
theoretical problem whether
such stylistic differences should
be regarded as within
semantics or treated as
features of different 'l'.
* Thirdly, some words may
differ only in their emotive or
evaluative meanings.
The remainder of their
meaning, their 'cognitive'
meaning, remains the same.
* Some semanticists have
made a great play with the
emotive difference between
politician+statesman
hide +conceal
liberty+freedom,
each implying approval or
disapproval.
*The function of such words in
l. is, of course, to influence
attitudes.
*There are far more subtle
ways than saying sth. is good
or bad or even of choosing a
'good' or a 'bad' word.
*In politics particular words
are often chosen simply for the
effect they are likely to have.
*Fascist no longer refers to a
member of the fascist parties,
it is simply used to condemn
and insult opponents.
* Words may have different
emotive meanings in different
societies.
*liberal is a 'good' word in
Great Britain - even used by
Winston Churchill of himself
when he was politically a
Conservative,
but it is a 'bad' word in South
Africa and in some political
circles in the US.
*Nevertheless, it is a mistake
to separate such emotive or
evaluative meaning from the
'basic' 'cognitive' meaning of
words for 3 reasons:
a. it is not easy to establish
precisely what cognitive
meaning is, and certainly not
reasonable to define it in
terms of reference to physical
properties, bcz most v.+adj
would have little or no
cognitive meaning.
b.there are words in E. that are
used purely for evaluative
purposes, most obviously the
adj. good + bad,
but it is not normally assumed
that they have no cognitive
meaning.
*Such words interest moral
philosophers, but shouldn’t
have any special place in
linguistics.
c.we make all kinds of
judgments + do not merely
judge in terms of 'good' and
'bad'.
*We judge size+use the
appropriate terms :
giant/ dwarf
mountain/ hill, etc.
*we make other kinds of
judgments in our choice of
words.
*The meaning of words is not
simply a matter of objective
facts; a great deal of it is
subjective and we can't clearly
distinguish between the two.
d.some words are
collocationally restricted
i.e. they occur only in
conjunction with other words.
*rancid occurs with bacon or
butter
addled with eggs or brains.
*This does not seem to be a
matter of their meaning,but of
the company they keep.
*It could be argued that these
are true synonyms differing
only in that they occur in
different environments.
e. Many words are either close
in meaning, or their meanings
overlap.
* There is, a loose sense of
synonymy. This is the kind of
synonymy that is exploited by
the dictionary-maker.
Ex/the adj. mature, has
possible synonyms:
adult, ripe,perfect, due.
Ex/govern may have :
direct, control, determine,
require.
Ex/while loose (adj.)
Has a larger set:
free, relaxed, vague, lax,
unbound, inattentive,slack,etc.
*the synonyms for each of
these words themselves, have
a further set for each and shall
get further and further away
from the meaning of the
original word.
*Dictionaries, unfortunately
(except the very large ones),
tell us little about the precise
connections between words+
their defining synonyms or
between the synonyms
themselves.
*It would be useful if we had
some way of testing
synonymy,such as substitution:
substituting1word for another.
*It has been suggested that
true or total synonyms are
mutually interchangeable in all
their environments.
*But there are no total
synonyms in this sense;
*this would seem to be a
corollary of the belief that no2
words have exactly the same
meaning.However,some words
are interchangeable in certain
environments only.
Ex/deep or profound may be
used with sympathy.
but only deepwith water.
Ex/a road may be broad or
wide
but an accent only broad.
*But this will give us little
measure of synonymy or of
similarity of meaning;
it will merely indicate the
collocational possibilities, and
these do not seem to be
always closely related to
nearness of meaning.
*Another possibility is to
investigate the 'opposites' (the
antonyms.
Ex/superficial is contrasted
with both deep + profound, but
shallow is contrasted only with
deep.
*Perhaps the fact that 2 words
appear to have the same
antonyms is a reason to treat
them as synonyms.
*but the some words are
interchangeable in certain
environments,
Ex/it is precisely in the context
in which deep and profound
are interchangeable + have
the antonym superficial.
*Synonyms often differ only in
their connotations.
But This is not a very useful
term, why?
a.Bcz It often refers to emotive
or evaluative meaning which is
not usefully distinguished from
cognitive meaning according to
Palmer's view.
b.It also refers to stylistic,
dialectal differences,
or even to the small
differences that are found in
near-synonyms.
c. It is sometimes suggested
that words become associated
with certain characteristics of
the items to which they refer.
Ex/woman
has the connotation 'gentle'
*the connotation of pig is
'dirty'.
*Such connotations were the
subject of Osgood's
investigation.
*Strictly, however, this is not a
matter of the meaning of
words or even of meaning in
general.
*It rather indicates that some
people believe that women
are gentle+pigs dirty.
*they even It is change names
to avoid such connotations.
*there is a natural process of
change with taboo words.
*Bcz the word is associated
with a socially distasteful
subject, it becomes distasteful
itself,+ another word, a
'euphemism', takes its place.
*But the process is unending
since it is essentially the object
and not the word that is
unpleasant.
*Words even become taboo
when the distasteful obj. is
referred to by the word in a
different sense
(whether it is homonymous or
polysemous).
Thus, intercourse is not used to
mean social or commercial
relationships.
For similar reasons, in America
the male domestic fowl is a
rooster.
*There are two phenomena
that are sometimes handled
under synonymy .
The 1st is context-dependent
synonymy:
where two items appear to be
synonymous in a particular
context.
Ex/dog and bitch in
My — has just had pups.
Ex/buy and get as in:
I'll go to the shop and — some
bread (Lyons 1968(
*But this an argument for the
hyponymy of the words not
synonymy.
Where one term is more
specific than the other.
*The context,however,supplies
the specific information that is
lacking in one of the ex.:
having pups indicates that the
dog is female.
going to the shop suggests that
the bread is to be bought.
* But this is not part of the
meaning:
The dog might not be female
(remarkable though it would
be)
and I might steal the bread not
buy it.
*The fact that information can be
gleaned from the context does not
affect the meaning of items:
Ex/the book + the red book. These
could be contextually
synonymous:
1.(if we had already mentioned a
red book linguistically.
2. or, non-linguistically, if there
was one, red, book before us).
*Yet we can't say that these have
the same meaning.
*The 2nd kind of'synonymy' is that
between bull and male adult bovine
animal.
*The test of interchangeability would
rule these out completely as
synonymous, bcz one would hardly say
that there is(a male adult bovine
animal in the field)
even though in some sense the two
items seem to have the same meaning.
*But this is not a natural linguistic
phenomenon; it is created by the
linguist or lexicographer for the
purposes of definition and paraphrase.
*Moreover, it is more related to
componential analysis than to
synonymy.
5.4 Antonymy
*it is used for 'oppositeness of
meaning;' words that are
opposite are antonyms.
*Antonymy is often thought of
as the opposite of synonymy,
but the status of the 2 are very
different.how?
* For l. have no real need of
true synonyms+ it is doubtful
whether any true synonyms
exist.
*But antonymy is a regular+
very natural feature of l. +can
be defined fairly precisely.
*Yet, surprisingly, it has been
neglected in books on
semantics + it is not even
usually given a place in Dict.
…………………………………………
*However, there are different
kinds of 'oppositeness'.
*To begin with, E. abounds in
pairs of words such as
wicle/narrow, old/young,
big/ small, etc.
* These adj. have may be seen
in terms of degrees of the
quality involved.
*Thus a road may be wide or
very wide+
one road may be wider than
another.
*So we have gradation of
width, age, size, etc. indicated
by such adj.
*Sapir (1944 [1949]) argued
that we should handle all these
words in terms of grading.
*The comparative forms of the
Adj. (those ending in -er or
occurring with more) are
EXPLICITLY graded and placed
in a graded scale for
comparison since to say that
one road is wider than
another, one boy is older than
another or one book is bigger
than another.
*Sapir also argued that although these
comparative forms (er and more)
which are preceded linguistically by
the simple forms they precede them
logically in that wide, old + big can
only be understood in terms of being
wider, older, bigger than sth._some
norm or other. Thus, they are
implicitly graded antonyms.
*These adj. are not only
gradable, but they are graded
against different norms
according to the items being
discussed.
Ex/if we say that not many
people were present, this
might mean 5 or 6 if we were
talking about an intimate
party.
but perhaps as many as twenty
thousand if we were talking
about the attendance at an
important football match at
Wembley.
*The norm is set by the object
being described.
Ex/A stripe on a dress may be
wide if it is only 2 inches wide,
but a road would have to be
many yards wide before it
could be so described.
*This accounts for the
apparent paradox of :
a small elephant being bigger
than a big mouse.
for small means 'small as
elephants go'
and big 'big as mice go'.
*For most antonyms a set of
relationships hold between the
comparative forms.
Ex/
The road is wider than the
lane.
The lane is narrower than the
road.
The road is less narrow than
the lane.
The lane is less wide than the
road.
All of these are mutually
implied + related both in terms
of simple reversal with switch
of antonyms, +
the 'more' and 'less' relation
which also involves switch of
antonyms.
*since antonyms are gradable,
there are often intermediate
terms.
* Thus we have not just
hot/cold,
but hot/ warm/ cool/ cold.
The intermediate terms warm+
cool form a pair of antonyms
themselves.
*A further point is that in each
pair one of the terms is the
MARKED term+the other
unmarked in that only one is
used simply to ask about or
describe the degree of the
gradable quality.
Ex/We say How high is it? How
wide is it? It is3 feet high,
It is 4 yards wide,
with no implication that it is
either high or wide.
*But the other term of the pair
is not so used - it is the marked
term. Thus How low is it? How
narrow is it? imply that the
object in question actually is
low or narrow.
*we would not say
It is three feet low or
It is four yards narrow
only in jocular cases.
*Notice also that the same
member of the pair is used to
form the n.( height + width)
which are equally neutral as
compared with lowness+
narrowness.
*In the E. ex. it is the 'larger'
term that is unmarked, but this
is not a universal feature.
Ex/E. talks of a thickness
gauge,
Japanese talks of a 'thinness
gauge.'
*the pairs of the type
male/ female, married/ single,
alive/ dead may be added.
*Lyons (1968(treats them in
terms of complementarity, the
items being complementary to
each other.
*they belong to the set of
incompatible terms,
but with1specific characteristic
- that they are members of
two-term sets instead of the
multiple-term sets.
*But they are in some ways
similar to gradable antonyms.
*Both exhibit incompatibility;
To say that sth. is wide is to say
that it is not narrow.
To say that someone is
married is to say that he is not
single.
*But there is a striking
difference between the2types.
*to say something is NOT the
one = is to say that it is the
other.
Ex/If Peter is not married, he is
single, and vice versa.
*This results from the fact that
there are only 2 possibilities
(it would not be the same with
the multiple sets).
*With the gradable antonyms,
in contrast, although there are
only 2 terms, it is not the case
that to say sth. is not (for
instance) wide = is to say that
it is narrow,
or that to say it is not narrow is
to say that it is wide.
*The possibility of being
neither wide nor narrow is left
open.
*Antonyms+ complementaries
do not lend themselves
very easily to the kind of
logical formalization.
*For antonyms we wish to say
that if sth. is A it is not B (and
vice versa),
for complementaries we have
to say, in addition, that if it is
not A it is B (and vice versa).
*Thus for the antonyms wide+
narrow we have:
Ɐx(W(x)→~ N(x)) and
Ɐx(N(x) → ~ W(x))
(though this follows
logically).
*for the complementaries
male and female the
formulae are
Ɐx(M(x) →~ F(x)) and
Ɐx(~ M(x) → F(x))
Together with
Ɐx(F(x) → ~ M(x)) and
Ɐx(~ F(x) →M(x))
(which also follow from the
first two).
* But this is not sufficient to
characterise complementaries
and antonyms.
*In both cases we must also
show that they belong to the
same semantic system or field.
Why?
*For, to take complementaries
first, it is not true to say that, if
sth. is not male, it is female,
since it could also be
inanimate.
*The complementarity of male
+ female is restricted to the
discussion of animates.
*Similarly, we should not
regard simian + ferrous
as antonyms, in spite of the
fact that if sth. is a monkey
it is not iron (and vice versa).
*Moreover, with antonyms it is
not enough that the terms also
belong to the same system.
Ex/equine and bovine are not
antonyms.
*The notion of gradability is
also essential.
*A further interesting point is
that there is no absolute
distinction between these2
types.
We can treat male/female,
married/ single, alive/ dead as
gradable antonyms on
occasions.
* Someone can be very male
or more married +
certainly more dead than alive.
……………………………………………..
*some gradable antonyms
have some characteristics of
the dichotomous pairs:
(i) There are some pairs of adj.,
ex/honest/ dishonest,
obedient/ disobedient,
open/ shut
those are gradable in terms of
more and less,
yet the denial of one is usually
taken to assert the other.
Thus though we may say :
Bill is more honest than John,
Bill isn't honest implies that Bill
is dishonest,
and
Bill isn't dishonest implies that
Bill is honest. These are
explicitly gradable, but they
are not treated as implicitly
gradable.
ii. Some pairs of antonyms are, 1. many of them indicate not only the
relationship, but the sex of the person
in Sapir's terms,
concerned.
not 'symmetrically reversible'. Ex/father is the male parent, daughter
The more+ less relationship a female child and.
cannot be applied to them. *This blocks reversibility.
Ex/ John is Sam's father ≠Sam is John's
Ex/ the pair brilliant + stupid,
Son, Sam could be his daughter.
since more brilliant does not *We therefore have pairs indicating
equal less stupid the same relationship but a different
or more stupid, less brilliant. sex:
father/mother, son/ daughter,
*The terms, though gradable,
uncle/ aunt, nephew/niece.
also have an absolute value at *There are also pairs of words that
one of the 'ends' of the scale. would be symmetric were it not for
………………………………………………. their indication of sex.
Ex/brother and sister. It does not
5.5 Relational opposites
follow that if John is Sam's brother,
1* A quite different kind of 'opposite'
Sam is John's brother (she might be his
is found with pairs of words which
sister).
exhibit the reversal of a relationship
*Only a small number of terms in E. do
between items (or argument).
not indicate sex
Ex/buy/ sell, husband/wife.
cousin (which is symmetric) and
If John sells to Fred, Fred buys from
parent,child,grandparent,grandchild
John;
(which are not symmetric).
if Bill is Mary's husband, Mary is Bill's
*some terms avoid sex reference and
wife.
so are symmetric, but are mostly used
*Lyons (1968) suggests the term
only by anthropologists
converseness for these, but Palmer
spouse for husband/wife
suggests relational opposition since he
and sibling for brother/ sister.
is concerned to point out their
But there are no similar terms for
relational characteristics.
uncle/aunt,,nephew/niece.
*There are several pairs in this way:
2.whether a term is symmetric or not
1/V.
is a matter of the l.
buy/sell,lend/ borrow, rent/ let,
Thus be married to is symmetric in
own/ belong to, give/ receive.
E. bcz, like spouse, it does not indicate
2/N.: husband/ wife, fiance/ fiancee,
sex.
parent/child, debtor/creditor,
*But in many l. a different term is used
and, possibly, teacher/ pupil.
for husband+wife, quite often
3/terms referring to spatial position:
the active form of the v. for the
above/ below, in front of/ behind,
husband+ the passive term for the
north of/ south of, etc.
wife :
4/ In grammar, too, active and
John 'marries' Mary but
Passive:
Mary 'is married' to John.
if Tom hits Harry,
*(In E. marry and be married to are
Harry is hit by Tom
used for either partner, and so are
………………………………………………………...
both symmetric).
*Terms involved in relational
*Similarly, many l. have no symmetric
opposition may be transitive,
term cousin; the sex has to be
Ex/above + below.
indicated in these l., or the precise
If the picture is above the table
relationship of the parents.
and the table above the carpet, the
*Another complications:
picture is above the carpet.
The brother+sister relationship in
* They cannot be symmetric, why?
some l. is bound up not only with the
symmetric relations are those in
sex, but also the age of the child;
which, by definition, the same relation
thus if 2 girls are sisters,
holds between the arguments in both
one is the 'elder sister,'+
directions, so that only 1 term is
one the 'younger sister' of the other.
required and not 2.
*There are some terms that are not
*Whereas relational opposites involve
strictly related as relational opposites,
2 relations R and R'
but differ in spatial direction.
VxVv(R(x,3') -^ R'(v,x)),
Ex/come+ go +other pairs of related
symmetric relations involve only one,
words in similar ways:
VxV3;(R(x,3;) -^ K(y,x)).
ask expects reply
Ex of a symmetric relationship are
offer expects accept.
married to, beside,meet.
These are not examples of relational
*ex of relational opposites is Kinship
opposites,but of a temporal relation.
terms.
Kinship terms are interesting for 2
reasons:
Moreover the relationship between
the members of each pair is not the
same. Ask and offer may
'expect' reply and accept, but the
'expectation' may be dis-
appointed - there may be no reply or
acceptance (though, for offer, there is
also the term refuse).
* But reply+accept also'presuppose'
that there has been an act of asking or
giving this is a natural result of the
temporal relationship.
*Finally, note that the 'true' gradable
antonyms can be handled in terms of
relational opposites.
*wide can be seen as wider than the
norm + that if a is wider than b, b is
narrower than a.
*The comparative forms wider+
narrower;the explicitly gradable forms
are thus relational opposites+transitive
not symmetric or reflexive:
if a is wider than b and b is wider than
c, a is wider than c.
*Notice, however, (that as wide as, as
narrow as, etc.) are symmetric,
transitive+reflexive.
……………………………………………………………
5.6 Polysemy and homonymy
*Sameness of meaning is not very easy
to deal with but there is nothing
inherently difficult about difference of
meaning.
*Not only different words have
different meanings; but also the same
word may have a set of different
meanings. This is polysemy and such a
word is polysemic.
*Thus the dictionary will define the
word flight in at least the following
ways:
'passing through the air',
'power of flying' 'air journey'
'unit of the Air Force'
'volley', 'digression'
'series of steps'.
*Yet there are problems even with this
apparently simple concept.
First/we cannot clearly distinguish
whether2 meanings are the same or
different, therefore,we cannot
determine exactly how many
meanings a word has.
Bcz a meaning is not easily delimited+
distinguished from other meanings.
Ex/The dict. will distinguish the v. eat
in its 'literal' sense of taking food+the
derived meanings of
'use up' + 'corrode'
*perhaps, we should treat these as 3
different meanings.
*But we can also distinguish between
eating meat(with a knife) + eating soup
(with a spoon).
*Moreover,we can talk about drinking
soup as well as eating it.so in one of its
senses, then, eat corresponds to drink.
*The problem,however, is to decide
whether this represents a distinct
meaning of eat.
*an alternative solution is that the
meaning of eat merely overlaps the
meaning of drink.
*but each meaning covers a wide
semantic 'area', though a great deal of
which does not overlap.
* If we decide, however, that there are
2 meanings of eat, we may then ask
whether eating jelly is the same as
eating toffee(which involves chewing)+
eating sweets(which involves sucking).
*Clearly we eat different types of food
in different ways+if we are not careful,
we shall decide that eat has a different
meaning with every type of food that
we eat.
*so,we ought not to look for all
possible differences of meaning,
but to look for sameness of meaning
as far as we can.+
and to accept that there is no clear
criterion of either difference or
sameness.
………………………………………………………….
*A more practical problem is that if 1
form has several meanings, it is not
always clear whether this is an ex
of polysemy (one word with several
meanings) or
of HOMONYMY (several words with
the same shape).
Ex/the dict. treats flight as a single
(polysemic) word.
*But it recognises no less than five
words (five homonyms) for mail:
'armour', 'post', 'halfpenny', 'payment'
and 'spot'
(the meaning of halfpenny is shown as
'obsolete')
and (payment and spot) are'Scottish'.
*the important point is that they are
not shown as different meanings of
the same word).
*The dict. has to decide whether a
particular item is to be handled in
terms of polysemy or homonymy,
because
a polysemic item will be treated as a
single entry,
while a homonymous one will have a
separate entry for each of the
homonyms.
*but this does not mean that we can
decide between polysemy+homonymy
merely by consulting the dict. why?
For we must question the reasons for
the decisions made by the dictionary-
maker +, in some cases, these seem to
be quite arbitrary.
*There is some complication in that
we do not make the same distinctions
in writing and speech.Ex/lead(metal)
+lead (dog's lead) are spelt in the same
way+pronounced
differently(homography),while site and
sight, rite and right(HOMOPHONY)
‫نفس اللفظ لكن االمالء مختلف‬
*there are some homonyms +
homophones that are nearly antonyms
ex/cleave'part asunder'+
cleave 'unite'
raise + raze.
*The problem, however, is to decide
when we have polysemy+when we
have homonymy.
*when we have a written form with2
meanings,will we say it is 1word with
different meanings (polysemy)
Or 2different words with the same
shape (homonymy)?
*There are a number of ways to
answer this question.
*1st, dictionaries usually base their
decision upon etymology.
*If it is known that identical forms
have different origins they are
treated as homonymous+given
separate entries;
*if it is known that they have 1 origin,
even if they have different meanings,
they are treated as polysomic+ given a
single entry in the dict.
*This is, however, far from satisfactory
for the history of a language does not
always reflect accurately its present
state.
*ex/we should not usually relate pupil
(= student) with the pupil of the eye,
or the sole of a shoe with the fish sole.
*Yet historically they are from the
same origin,+as such are ex. of
polysemy.
*Yet,in the l. of today they are pairs of
unrelated words, i.e. homonyms.
*On the other side we find that we
speak of the hands+face of a clock, the
foot of a bed or of a mountain, the leg
of a chair or table,the tongue of a shoe
the eye of a needle or a potato.
*As well as using the same terms for
parts of the body, and similarly have
the word ear used of the gar of corn.
These seem to be ex. of metaphor+ so,
of polysemy.
*Yet the etymologists tell us that the
ear of corn is in no way related
(historically) to the ear of the body.
*Historically, then, they are
homonyms.
*But most people today would regard
them as the same word with different
meanings, i.e. as ex. of polysemy.
*There are other ex -com (= grain)
+com on the foot,
meal(= repast)+meal (= flour).
*Each of which has a different
etymology.
*But are they different words for us
today?History can be misleading.
*Curiously, a difference of spelling
does not always indicate a difference
of origin.
*Thus even what are today
homophones may be derived from the
same original form.
Ex are metal and mettle, flour and
flower.
*These pose real problems for the
semanticist.
*For if he relies on his historical
knowledge, they are the same word,
merely ex. of polysemy, even though
they are spelt differently.Yet this is
odd.
*Can we consider words that are spelt
differently to be the 'same' word?
*Yet we find that difference of spelling
does not guarantee difference of
origin.
*Does the dictionary-maker then treat
these as different words because they
are spelt differently, or as the same
word because they have a single
origin?
*In practice he usually (but not always)
allows the spelling difference to
decide, because he needs to keep
words in their alphabetical position.
*2nd, we may ask whether we can
make any general remarks about
difference of meaning.
* Are regular types of difference found
in the meaning of various words?For it
is reasonable to suggest that where
the differences are regular+to some
degree predictable, we have polysemy
rather than homonymy.
*One of the most familiar kinds of
relationships between meanings is
that of metaphor where a word
appears to have both a 'literal'meaning
+one or more'transferred' meanings.
Ex/the words for parts of the body,
hand, foot, face,leg, tongue, eye, etc.
*our intuitions are supported by the
fact that the whole set of words
applies only to the body; only some of
them can be transferred to the
relevant object:
the clock has no legs, the bed no
hands, the chair no tongue, etc.
*Metaphor is, however, fairly
haphazard.
*It may seem obvious that foot is
appropriate to mountains,
or eye to needles,
but a glance at other l. shows that it is
not.
*In French,the needle does not have
an 'eye', and in many languages such
as the Ethiopian l. or some of those of
North America the mountain does not
have a 'foot'.
*Moreover, in E. eye is used with a
variety of other meanings, e.g. the
centre of a hurricane or a spring of
water, which are not so obviously
related semantically to the organ of
sight, yet it is not used for the centre
of a flower or an indentation, though
these might seem intuitively to be
reasonable candidates for the
extension of the meaning.
*There are some other kinds of
'transference' that are more regular.
*Thus many adj. may be used either
literally for the quality referred to or
with the transferred meaning of being
the source of the quality.
Ex/a person may be sad+a book may
be sad, while a coat may be warm in
the two senses (either it is of a certain
degree of temperature or it keeps one
warm).
*The l. recognises the difference of
meaning in that we cannot say
John is as sad as the book he was
reading.
*This is similar to the traditional
grammarian's concept of ZEUGMA
(She was wearing a white dress and a
smile on her face), for in each case one
word co-occurs with 2 other words+
these two each require the first to
have a different meaning, and this is
not allowed in the l.
*Similarly, many n. have a concrete+
an abstract sense.
Ex/Thus we may compare:
The score of the symphony is on the
table+ The score of the symphony is
difficult to follow.
*Notice once again that we cannot say
The score is on the table and difficult
to follow.
Similar contrasts are also: thesis, book,
bible, etc.
*However, it is not always easy to
decide whether a relationship is
regular or not.
*E. has intransitive and transitive (in
the grammatical not the logical sense)
uses of verbs such as: open and ring.
The door opened, I opened the door.
The bell rang, I rang the bell.
*certain basic and causative forms are
slightly different:
march, walk, run
He marched/,walked/ran a mile vs.
He marched them up to the top of the
hill,He walked the dog. He ran the
children to school.
*So it seems reasonable:
not to recognise homonymous pairs
here +
not, therefore, to say that there are 2
v. open, 2 v. march, etc.
*Yet the meaning relations are not
wholly regular: does walk the dog
mean 'cause the dog to walk?'
+ run the children does not mean
'cause the children to run'.
*Moreover, not all v. function in a
similar way, we have no intransitive
×The man wounded (and no causative)
×He swam them across the river.
*A less regular relationship is that
found with :
taste^ feel + smell, which may mean
either 'have the sensation' or 'act to
acquire the sensation' as in:
tasted salt in the porridge +
tasted the porridge.
*senses of sight+hearing have
different v. to express these related
meanings:
see + look at,
hear + listen to.
*Do we then decide that there are 2 v.
taste?
………………………………………………………..
*A 3rd + rather different way of
attempting to establish polysemy
rather than homonymy is to look for a
central meaning or a core of meaning.
*This is possible where we have ex of
metaphor or of the 'transferred'
meanings we noted for sad+score.
*But in general it is very difficult to
decide whether there is any central or
core meaning.
*It is obvious enough why key is used
not only for key of the door,but also
for a translation or a keystone
(one 'unlocks', the other 'locks'),
but it is by no means easy to see why it
is used for the keys of a piano+
therefore, not at all clear that this is an
ex. of polysemy.
*Nor is there any obvious relation
between air 'atmosphere' + the
meanings of 'manner' +'tune'.
*With v. the problem is often even
greater.
*Charge is used of electricity, of
charging expenses, of a cavalry attack+
of an accusation.
*These are quite far apart in their
meanings.Can we discover a central or
core meaning?
*If we look at what has happened in
history we see why the problem has
arisen.
*Words change their meaning in quite
surprising ways.
*Thus arrive is derived from Latin ripa
'a shore' + originally meant 'reach
shore'
while rival comes from Latin rivus
'a stream', rivals originally being
people who shared the same stream.
*With such changes it is not surprising
that meanings of charge should have
so diverged – its earlier meaning is
'load', + it is related to car and even, in
a less direct fashion, to cargo.
*4th, we can use the test of ambiguity
went to the bank seems to be clearly
ambiguous,since bank can mean either
river bank or the place that deals with
money.
*But decisions are not always easy.
Ex/Kill is used to refer either to
murdering or killing accidentally.
*The commandment Thou shalt not kill
is to be understood in the first sense.
*but The motorist killed the child in
the 2nd.
*Yet we shouldn't say that
John killed Bill is ambiguous.
*Slightly,more difficult is:
I heard the girl crying.
*the 2 senses of cry('weep' + 'shout')
make us conclude that there is
ambiguity.
……………………………………………………………
*one of the tests of ambiguity is the
'co-ordination test':
John + Bill went to the bank cannot be
taken to mean that 1 went to the river
and the other to the financial
institution.
*Similarly,the room+the furniture were
light cannot be taken to mean that:
the room was bright and the furniture
not heavy.
*A particular version of this is the 'do
so' test,
*the fact that we should not say
John went to the bank + so did Bill
with the 2 meanings of bank.
*But these tests do not help, for
judgments about co-ordination
depend upon judgments about
sameness of meaning, + the doubtful
cases remain.
Ex/If we judge that Mary cried and so
did Ruth is acceptable in the sense that
Mary wept and Ruth shouted.
It will be because we do not regard cry
as ambiguous.
*In any case,the coordination test will
force us to make too many
distinctions.
*There is sth. curious about:
John likes brunettes+marshmallows +
saw Helen and a football match this
aftertnoon, but these would hardly
lead us to say that there are 2 v. like+
v. see.
*we cannot say:
The score is on the table+difficult to
follow;yet this would(wrongly) suggest
2 distinct lexemes score.
*It is not even the case that ambiguity
itself is sufficient to establish
homonymy.
*Kempson (1977) considers:
He ran the race for Hampshire,
which may mean either that he was a
competitor or that he organised the
race.
*But since the 2 meanings of run here
are related in terms of causativity like
those of walk + march,
it would be curious to suggest that we
have 2 lexical items.
*Ambiguity can result from
grammatical as well as lexical
differences.
Ex/They hit the ball is ambiguous
between present and past tense, while
Flying planes can be dangerous
(Chomsky 1965: 21) is ambiguous
Bcz flying planes has 2 possible
grammatical structures with the
meanings
*the act of flying planes' +
'planes that are flying').
*The2meanings of run are of a semi-
grammatical kind, run being in1case
intransitive (though taking an 'internal
obj.' like race)+in the other transitive.
*Nothing is gained by treating these 2
uses of run as different lexical items.
*However, a word that is polysemic
will have a variety of synonyms each
corresponding to one of its meanings.
*It will often also have a set of
antonyms.
*Thus fair may be used with
(i) hair, (2) skin, (3) weather, (4) sky,
(5) judgment, (6) tackle.
*The obvious antonyms would seem to
be (i)dark, (2) dark, (3) foul, (4) cloudy,
(5) unfair, (6) foul.
*(It is also used with work or
performance, but there it is a middle
term 'neither good nor bad'+has, thus,
no antonym).
*It can be seen that fair with hair+fair
with skin have the same antonym
(dark)+ so do fair with weather + fair
with tackle (foul).
*We might be tempted to say that
where the antonym is the same we
have polysemy,+that difference of
antonym implies homonymy.
*But this will suggest that fair with
weather is more like fair with tackle
than fair with sky.
*Intuitively,sky is more closely related
to weather and tackle to judgment,
but the antonyms do not provide
evidence for this.
*There may be formal reasons for
recognising homonymy.
*The French word poli means polished
either in the literal or the transferred
sense.
*This would seem to be a clear ex of
polysemy, but in the literal sense the
word is linked with depolir
('take polish off) + polissage
Cpohshing'), while in the other sense it
goes with impoli ('unpolished' or
'impoHte') + politesse ('politeness').
*This seems to suggest that there are
2 different words that belong to 2
different related sets.
*Notice,that multiplicity of meaning is
not confined to the words of the dict.
*It is also found with grammatical
elements; the E. past tense has 2
different meanings.
*So do some prefixes; in- usually
means 'not,' but this is not so in
inflammable.
(This word has led, through
misunderstanding resulting from the
ambiguity of the prefix, to some
unfortunate accidents, + on the advice
of Whorf it has become the practice in
the USA to use the invented word
flammable instead.
*There is,as we have seen,similar
ambiguity in syntax.
*Familiar ex. are:
The old men + women + Visiting
relatives can be a nuisance.*Both can
be analyzed differently in syntax with
accompanying difference of meaning.
Multiplicity of meaning is a very
general characteristic of l.
5.7 Components
*Analysis in terms of components
would seem a different approach.
*the total meaning of a word being
seen in terms of a number of distinct
elements or components of meaning.
*The notion of component is not a
further kind of relation, rather it
purports to offer a theoretical
framework for handling all reltions.
*The idea that semantics could be
handled in terms of components, has
been argued with the investigation of
kinship terms.
Ex/It was noted in Spanish,the sex of
the people involved is clearly marked -
ending -0 for male –a for female as in
(Lounsbury 1956: 158):
tio 'uncle' tia 'aunt'
hijo 'son' hija 'daughter'
abuelo 'grandfather' abuela
'grandmother'
hermano 'brother' hermana 'sister'
*E. has no markers of sex,though the
ending -ess occurs in:
baroness, tigress, lioness, duchess,etc.
*But if we are concerned with
semantics that is not particularly
relevant.There is no reason why we
should not attempt to classify the E.
kinship terms with reference to
categories such as sex, even if the l.
does not mark these terms in the form
of the words.
*Sex therefore provides 1 set of
components for kinship terms;
generation differences + degrees of
relationship provide 2 others.
*Thus for generation differences we
need at least 5 generations which may
be labelled g1, g2, g3, g4,g5.
*Then grandfather is g1,father, uncle,
etc,.
g 2, brother,cousin, g3, son, niece g4
and grandson g5.
*On such a system the'ego'(the person
for whom the relationships hold) is,
obviously g3.
*Of course we would need others to
deal with great grandfather, etc.
*Degrees of relationship involve
LINEALITY-DIRECT for grandfather,
father,COLINEAL for brother, uncle
(but with different generation)+
ablineal for cousin.
*Given these 3 sets of components all
the E kinship terms can be handled.
Aunt is thus female,g2 + colineal,
cousin male or female, g3 + ablineal.
*However, although this kind of
approach to kinship has been
important in the history of
components, there are considerable
doubts about its own 'reality' + about
its relevance to the systems actually
found in l.
*We can most easily recognise
components where words can be set
out in a diagrammatic form to
represent some kind of 'proportional'
relationship.
*In E, + many l. there is a 3-fold
division with many words that refer to
living creatures:
man woman child bull cow calf
ram ewe lamb boar sow piglet
*Thus bull is to cow as ram is to ewe
or in mathematical terms
bull: cow: : ram : ewe.
*In the light of relationships such as
these we can abstract the components
(male)+(female),(adult)+(non adult),
plus (human),(bovine),(ovine)+
(porcine).
*Strictly these ex. do not distinguish
(male)+(female) in full conjunction
with (adult)+(non-adult).
*since that would imply 4 possibilities
+ we only have 3.
*But all 4 are to be found in:
man woman boy girl
*However, even with the other ex, it is
more plausible to make both
distinctions than to say that there are
simply 3 possibilities
(male),(female) + (non-adult).
*Analysis of this kind (componential
analysis) allows us to provide
definitions for all these words in terms
of a few components.
*Thus boar is (porcine), (male), (adult)
+ so on.
*There are,gaps in the system
- there are no terms to distinguish
between the male, female + the young
with giraffes or rhinoceroses.
*Often the distinction is made by using
a term taken from another set in
conjunction with the generic one:
bull elephant, cow elephant + elephant
calf.
*Badgers are similarly boars + sows
(though the young are presumably
cubs); the male fox is a dog or dog-fox,
but the female has a specific term
vixen.
*In many cases there is an appropriate
word in the l. to label the component.
Male + female are obvious ex.
*But it would be a mistake to suppose
that if we use such terms to define a
common word that the resultant
phrase is semantically identical with it.
*Thus boar is not the same as male
adult porcine animal; it is important to
note that in the vocabulary of E. we
have words such as boar + bull,
whereas with giraffe we can only use
the phrase adult male giraffe; the
difference is relevant to the semantic
structure of E.
*Such labels are not, however, always
readily available.
*We have noted the semantic
relationship:
come go bring take
We noted that come is to go as bring is
to take + we could therefore
distinguish components X and Y and A
+ B such that come is XA and go XB,
bring YA + take YB.
*But what could be the names of the
components?
*It is difficult to provide an answer, for
they cannot be identified with features
that have any simple kind of physical
reality.
*We may,assume that all societies
distinguish between male + female +
that thus (male) + (female) are
universal components of l.
*But the come, go, bring, take are ex
show that not all components are
related to simple physical features
such as sex, + it becomes less plausible
to assume that they are universal.
*A particular characteristic of
componential analysis is that it
attempts as far as possible to treat
components in terms of 'binary'
opposites for ex between
(male)+(female),(animate)+(inanimate,
(adult) + (non-adult).
*In this it clearly gives emphasis to the
relation of complementarity.
Notationally there is an advantage in
such binary terms in that we can
choose one only as the label+
distinguish this in terms of plusses+
minuses.
*Thus (male)+(female) are written as (
+ male) + (-male) + so on.
*We can, moreover,refer to the lack of
a sex distinction as 'plus or minus' with
the symbol (±male).
*But this works well only where there
is a clear distinction; often there is
indeterminacy,as with tar + porridge in
relation to (solid)/(liquid).
*Rather it has been used to bring out
the logical relations that are associated
with them.
*Thus by marking man as + male
And pregnant as -male, we can rule
out *pregnant man.
*Similarly by marking boy as ( + male)
(-adult) ( + human) + child as (-adult)+
( + human), we can establish that
There were 2 boys entails There were2
children + Children are a nuisance
entails Boys are a nuisance (though the
rules of entailment are obviously fairly
complex.
*Yet componential analysis does not
handle all semantic components,but in
a different 'direction';
but by introducing 'direction' into
components we are, in effect,
admitting that they
ARE relational + not simply 'atomic'
components of meaning.
*Secondly, the componential analysis
cannot remove the hierarchical
characteristic of hyponymy.
* For the distinction (+male)/(-male)
applies only to living (animate) things.
* Distinction in terms of these
components, e.g. between ram + ewe,
will hold only for items that are also
marked as (+ animate).
*In a straight hierarchical diagram this
is easily shown + is a natural
consequence of the hierarchy.
*In a componential analysis it still has
to be stated, for it is necessary to rule
out not only *pregnant ram but also
*pregnant table; the point here is that
the component (-male) is restricted to
those items which have (+ animate).
*Componential analysis therefore has
to state that, only if sth. is animate,
may it be male or female with a
formula such as (+ animate ±male).
*so such 'redundancy rules'are simply
a disguised way of stating the
hierarchical nature of the semantic
distinctions.
*Componential analysis can thus
handle all the relations we have
discussed, simply because it can be
made to do so, with the relevant
modifications.
* But it seems not to clarify but to
obscure their differences.
*The componential approach to
semantics is basic to Katz& Fodor's
'The structure of a semantic theory'
(1963).
*Katz modified his views,+ palmer has
used them as the basis of the
discussion.
*katz+ fodor are concerned essentially
with ambiguity, anomaly+paraphrase.
The arguments are, however, very
largely based upon ambiguity: upon
showing that a sentence may have two
readings.
Ex/The bill is large
is ambiguous until it is disambiguated
by. . . (but need not be paid).
*Turning to the structure of
vocabulary, they point out that a dict.
would distinguish between 4 meanings
of the word bachelor
(i) a man who has never married
(2) a young knight serving under the
banner of another
(3) someone with a first degree
(4) a young male unmated fur seal
during the mating season.
*These 4 meanings can, moreover, be
partly differentiated by what they call
'markers', shown in round brackets,
e.g. (human) (animal) and (male),
together with some specific
characteristics which are called
*distinguishers' + placed in square
brackets:
e.g. [first degree] in the case of the
academic.
*The semantics of bachelor can thus
be set out in a tree diagram (Figure 6).
*An important question, however, is
'How do we establish which precisely
are the markers?'
*The answer is that they are those
features that allow us to disambiguate
a sentence.
*An illustration provided by the
authors is:
The old bachelor finally died.
*This cannot refer to the fur seal, bcz
such bachelors are by definition young.
*therefore, (young) must be a marker
for the fur seal + that it must now
appear not among the distinguishers
as in Figure 6, but as a marker‫رسمة‬.
*The theory has 1 major drawback +
no limit to the number of markers that
can be established.
*For any piece of information can be
used to disambiguate + can function as
a marker.
Ex/The bachelor wagged his flippers
is hardly ambiguous; it must refer to
the fur seal. Whereas:
The bachelor got his hair wet,cannot
refer to the fur seal, though it might
refer to any of the other 3.
*If we use the disambiguation test we
have, for the fur seal, the markers
(having flippers)+(not having hair) +
the list is endless.
* Katz (1966(dropped the distinction
between marker and distinguisher, but
the difficulty remains.
*However, we shall be faced with an
infinite set of components, bcz in
principle any piece of information may
be used to disambiguate a sentence.
…………………………………………………………..
5.8 The problem of universals
*there is a question about the
universality of semantic features
whether they must occur in all l.
*At one extreme there is the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that
each l. may 'create' its own world + so
its own semantics.
*At the other it could be argued that
components like (male)+(female)+
many others are found in all l.
Ex/the basic colours&kinship relations
…………………………………………………………
*The simplest form of the universalist
view is that:
there is a universal inventory of
semantic features (components).
*But what is the relation between this
inventory and the set of features
found in individual languages?
*The strongest claim would be that all
l. make use of the whole inventory+ so
have the same features.
*A weaker claim is that each l. uses
only some of the features in the total
inventory.
*The 1st answer seems highly
implausible in view of the obvious
differences in l.; it can work only by
arguing that all the semantic features
can be exhibited somehow in each l.,
though some will be more central.
(This is tantamount to saying that if
sth. can be said in one l., it can be said
in another.)
*The 2nd answer seems more plausible:
all l. have 'male', 'female', 'black',
'white', etc., but many other features
are found only in some l.
*But neither this view nor the stronger
view makes a verifiable claim unless a
finite inventory of features is
produced.
*For let us suppose that we discover a
l. which have features that have never
been noted before.
If simply added to the inventory, the
claim about the universality of the
inventory becomes quite trivial.
*The claim cannot be disproved, even
in principle, if every counter-ex. can be
dealt with in this way.
*A still weaker claim is that only some
features are universal, while the rest
are characteristics of individual l.
*This may well be true, though it may
not even be that the' universal'
features are exactly the same in each l.
*This seems to be the case with the
colour terms+ categories.
*We do not find identity, but only
close similarity.
...............................................................
*if we accept the weakest universalist
claim: that l. share some semantic
features then What kind of
explanation can we give?
*There are at least 5 answers:
1/ The world is like that'.
2/The structure of the minds of all
people is basically the same.
3/The cultural needs of different
societies are similar.
4/There has been contact between
different societies with different l.
5/The l. of the world all have a
common origin.
*There may be some truth in these
answers,+it is not easy to separate
them.
*The first two replies (in terms of the
world+mind) raise the philosophical
problem of objective + subjective
reality.
*Is our experience like it is because:
that is( what the world is like), or
because (that is how our minds
interpret it?)
*Nevertheless, we can sometimes
distinguish between physical reality+
psychological reality.
*The sex distinctions in 'male'/'female'
have an objective,(physical basis)
as do the differences indicated by cow,
horse, elephant,etc. , whereas if it is
true that different people make
(roughly) the same colour distinctions,
these do not 'exist' in physical terms
but are part of the psychology of
perception (+the same is certainly true
of our perception of speech sounds.
(It is very important to recognise that
some kind of physical reality does not
necessarily make it the basis of a
semantic analysis. Kinship terminology
is a good ex.
*Since most societies have fairly strict
rules of'kindred+affinity' (as the Book
of Common Prayer calls them), kinship
relations can usually be stated wholly
in terms of a family tree which
depends on the parent-child+ the
husband-wife relationships.
*But there are2 objections to the type
of componential analysis.
*First, there are alternative, equally
plausible, analyses of the same
relationships.
*Secondly, +more importantly, in
some l. the linguistic system bears very
little resemblance to any of these
analyses.
*Thus in Pawnee the term that we
might translate as 'father' is used of all
the males whose relationship is
traceable through the father,
while 'uncle' is used of the males
traceable through the mother,
*and conversely, all the females
traceable through the mother are
'mother' and all the females traceable
through the father are 'aunt'.
*The rules for 'son', 'daughter',
'nephew', 'niece' are the converse of
these.(Lounsbury 1956).
*We must not ignore the influence of
cultures upon the linguistic systems,+
it is likely that kinship terminology, for
ex., will be much more a reflection of
them than of the actual objective
relationships.
*But it will not always be easy, or even
possible, to distinguish between
cultural reality+physical or
psychological reality.
*In the case of colour terminology,too,
there may be 3 factors at work.
*First, there are some objective
features:
The green of living plants
the red of blood
the blue of the sky.
*Secondly, it may be that there is
some psychological reality to the foci.
Thirdly, cultural considerations may
make certain colour distinctions
important, as was shown for Navaho.
*Finally, some apparent universals are
no more than an accident of the
history of l. in either of the 2 ways
indicated by the last 2 replies.
*It would appear that the modern
Welsh system of colour is now much
more like that of English, as a result of
increasing bilingualism.
*We cannot be sure how far similar
contacts have brought other linguistic
systems closer.
*Certainly it is the case that in most
semantic areas (certainly in colour
systems) the l. of Europe have much in
common.
*Nor can we be sure about the
historical relationship of l.
*For the l.families for which we take
evidence, a few thousand years go, + it
could be that all the extant l. of the
world have a common ancestor(+that
need not make any assumptions about
the origin of l. itself).
*If so, some, at least, of the universal-
like features of l. may simply be
accidental in the sense that our
languages could also have developed
in quite different ways + from quite
different origins.
Week7/ ‫النقوصات‬
7.4 Different ways of referring
1*3 kinds of referring exp.:
proper names
Which have unique reference
ex/Lake Ontario or Barbara
Collins.
pronouns
such as she, he, they.
Anaphora+NPs
have n. with variable reference
as the head, preceded by a
determiner+ possibly followed
by one or more complements:
D head C C
a cat
that broom in the corner
your home
some questions 2b answered
the plate that is broken that
u mentioned
2*Some complements can be
reduced and become modifiers
in prehead position.
D modifier head C Ex/We saw ‘Rigoletto’ last
the broken plate that u
mentioned
3*Complements+modifiers, if
present, provide part of the
identity of the referent:
they answer the question
'which?,’ which broom, which
plate.
4*Determiners have a more
complex role in identifying
referents.
*In a discussion of reference,
complements+modifiers are of
little importance, but
determiners are all-important.
5*Referring exp. with fixed
reference, like Lake Ontario,
do not require complements,
modifiers or determiners since
their uniqueness makes the
question ‘which?’ superfluous.
6*There are various
determiners, including zero
that is, no overt determiner
Ex/We’re counting money;
We’re counting coins.
7*there are several kinds of
determiners:
Demonstrative+possessive D
are different ways of
identifying:answering ‘which?’.
Quantifying determiners
answer
('how much?' or ‘how many?’).
Indefinite determiners
(a/an, some, any+ zero) do not
identify.
Definite D :the is used when
identity can be taken for
granted.
The demonstrative D :
this that (plural these and
those) indicate, that the
referent is near or not near the
speaker’s location.
Ex/We’ll use this table + those
chairs (over there).
*They also identify present or
future events versus past
events.
Ex/We’re going to see
‘Madame Butterfly’
tonight.We’ve been waiting for
this performance for a long
time.
month.That was a great
performance.
8*During the 20th century this
has acquired a use, among
some speakers of E, which is
not demonstrative but
equivalent to the indefinite
a/an, as in
I was driving down the street
when suddenly this big, black
car pulled out in front of me.
*The usage began as an
attempt to make the narration
more dramatic by putting the
referent(the car)—‘right on the
scene.’
But extensive use weakens
whatever dramatic effects
there may have been.
9*So-called possessive D refer
to an entity in its relation to
another referent, but
‘possession’ is a term for
various kinds of relation;
my necktie=ownership
my brother expresses kinship my
friend+my employer,
other associations;
Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’=
authorship;Ex/Donna’s picture may
refer to a picture of Donna or to 1
drawn or photographed by Donna.
10*Some determiners,
quantifiers, express the
amount or quantity of the
entity denoted by the n.
*Cardinal numbers are specific
quantifiers: one day, 5 people,
and 76 trombones.
*General quantifiers:
some eggs, a little milk, a few
problems, much traffic, several
accidents.
11*If a countable Np expresses
a total, it may be:
collective (all donkeys) or
distributive (every donkey)
12*Demonstrative, possessive
+ quantifying determiners can
be combined, in which case
the possessive word follows
the n.:
These 4 books, that idea of
yours, several friends of mine.
………………………………………………
3 other kinds of referemce:
7.4.1 Generic + non-generic
reference
1*the same referring exp. may
have quite different kinds of
reference:
5a/ A dog makes a fine pet.
5b/ Dogs make fine pets.
&
6a/ A dog is lying in the middle
of the street.
6b/ Dogs are lying in the
middle of the street.
*In 5a, a dog has generic
reference; the sentence is not
about a particular dog but
about the class of dogs as a
whole, dogs in general.
*In 5b, We can express the
same meaning of
generalization.
*You may agree with these
sentences without committing
yourself to the belief that all
dogs make fine pets.
*Neither sentence is an
answer to ‘Which dog(s)?’,
for the question is not
relevant.
*in 6a a dog does not have generic
reference; it does not refer to the
whole class of dogs.
*6b produces quite a different
message.
*5a+5b are equivalent; 6a+6b
are not.
*6a+6b do not answer ‘Which
dog(s)’? but the question is
relevant.
2*Some semanticists would
prefer to say that reference
can only be specific. + rather
than ‘generic reference’,they
would prefer the term
‘generic use of referring exp.'.
3*Generic reference in E can
be expressed in several ways
which are more or less
interchangeable.
7a/ The dog was man’s first
domestic animal=.
7b/Dogs were man’s first
domestic animal.
*these 2 have generic
reference bcz the change from
singular to plural, or vice versa,
does not make a difference.
*man also has generic
reference here; it is equivalent
to ‘humans’,a general class.
……………………………………………….
7.4.2 Specific + non-specific
reference
8a We have a dog.
8b We’d like to have a dog.
9a I’m sure there are answers
to all your questions.
9b I trust we can find answers
to all your questions.
1* in 8a,a dog refers to a
specific dog.The reference
is to a particular animal, +
we could insert the word
certain before dog without
changing the meaning.
*8b/a dog is non-specific in
reference:
‘some dog,not any particular
one’,
Though it could mean ‘a
certain particular dog.’
*in 9a answers has specific
reference (not in 9b).
2*Whether a referring exp. has
a specific referent or not, is
determined by the larger
context not from the exp.itself.
7.4.3 Definite + indefinite
reference
1*Demonstrative, possessive,+
quantitative determiners
identify a referent in a fairly
precise way.
2*The definite determiner the
occurs in:
a referring exp. when the
speaker assumes that the
hearer can identify the
referent (I’ve got the tickets)or
when identification is made
part of the referring exp.
(I’ve got the tickets that u
wanted).
3*Indefinite determiners:
a/an/some/zero, indicate that
the referent is part of a larger
entity.
4*When the referring exp. is
definite, the speaker assumes
that the referent can be
identified by the addressee for
one of four reasons.
*If none of these reasons
applies, the speaker provides
the identification.
1/The speaker assumes that
the hearer can identify the
referent from the physical-
social context(a form of deixis).
Ex/Take the cups off the table
and put them in the cabinet.
2/The speaker assumes that
the addressee can make the
necessary implicature to relate
a new reference to a previous
one.
Ex/ This was the site of the old
Stanwick Theater. The stage
was over here and the lobby
was over there.
3/The reference is fixed+
therefore part of the
addressee’s general
knowledge, like Lake Ontario.
*A referring exp. with fixed
reference is always definite+
some(not all) of them contain
the determiner the
*(A referring exp. with variable
reference may be definite or
indefinite.)
*some exp. with +without the are
equivalent: the Argentine= Argentina/
the Ukraine has become Ukraine.
* presence+absence of the
with a name yields 2 different
referring exp.: the Mississippi
is not the same as Mississippi.
*Family names used in the
plural occur with the:
the Johnsons; while other
personal names do not.
4/The referent, while not
unique in the way that Lake
Ontario is unique, has a unique
or nearly unique position in
the more limited world of the
speaker + addressee.
12/Careful! You might wake
the baby.
13/Have you received the
reports from the doctor?
Referring exp. like these are
much the same as names.
*Names like Richard +Barbara
are definite and specific as
referring exp. even though
there are numerous people so
named, just as there are
numerous babies, reports+
doctors.
*Exp. like the baby+Richard
have unique status within a
certain group of people during
a particular period of time.
*The Mayor + the president
have unique status for a larger
group of people, presumably,
than the baby.
*The uniqueness of these exp.
may be temporary:
the baby grows older
we change doctors
Richard moves out of our lives.
*If none of these conditions
obtains, then the referent is
specified by the speaker
through some complement or
modifier in the referring exp.
—with the presumption that
the complement or modifier
makes the referent clear to the
addressee.
14a The salesman who came
here yesterday was back again
today.
14b I’d like to look at the gold
ring with a small ruby on the
top shelf of that display case.
5*When the referring exp. is
indefinite, the hearer has to
make a choice from the
extension of the n., he has to
decide (which of all possible
referents+ what part of the
extension) is intended.
6*Frequently, a topic is
introduced as an indefinite
referring exp.
(new information) +
subsequent mention of the
topic is made with 1 or more
definite referring exp.
(given information).
…………………………………………
7*A definite NP presupposes
the existence of its referent+
an indefinite NP presupposes
the existence of more than its
referent, a class of referents to
which this one belongs
……………………………………………….
7.5 Deixis
1*The most primitive way of
referring to sth is to point to it.
*this kind of reference can
only be accomplished with
people + concrete things in
one’s immediate environment.
*On a less primitive level,
every l. has deictic words
which ‘point’ to ‘things’ in the
physical-social context of the
speaker + addressee(s)+ whose
referents can only be
determined by knowing the
context in which they are used.
Ex/when we encounter a
message on paper or on an
electronic recording:
15/I was disappointed that you
didn’t come this afternoon.
I hope you’ll join us tomorrow.
*we wouldn’t be able to
identify the referents of:
I, you, us, this afternoon or
tomorrow, though we
understand how the first three
+ the last two are related to
one another; because we know
E, we know,for example, that
the referent of I is part of the
referent of us+we know the
time sequence of this
afternoon + tomorrow.
2* The meaning of any lexeme
depends to some extent on the *they has a generalized,non-
context in which it occurs, but deictic reference to people in
deictic elements can only be general, especially those in
interpreted through their charge of some endeavor or
contexts. other, as in “They say that an
E. ex. of deictic words include: ounce of prevention is worth a
(1) pronouns pound of cure,” “They don’t
* I,you and we: ‘point’ to the make good cider the way
participants in any speech act. they used to”.
*he, she, it and they: refer to
others in the environment.
(2) locative expressions
*here and there: designate
space close to the speaker or
farther away.
*this/these and that/those :
indicate entities close to or
removed from the speaker.
(3) temporal expressions
now, then, yesterday, today,
tomorrow, last week, next
month,etc.
These are all relative to the
time when they are used.
3*Words which can be deictic
are not always so.
Ex/Today+ tomorrow are
deictic in
“We can’t go today but
tomorrow will be fine.”
They are not deictic in
“Today’s costly apartment
buildings may be tomorrow’s
slums.”
*Yet the relation between the2
words is analogous.
*here + there are deictic in
“James hasn’t been here yet. Is
he there with you?”.
They are not deictic in “The
children were running here
and there.”
*The pronoun you is not
deictic when used with the
meaning
‘one; any person or persons,’
as in“You can lead a horse to
water but you can’t make him
drink.”
Semantic roles week 8
A window broke
Tom broke a window
1* Every simple sentence,every
proposition, has 1 predicate and different
referring exp., or arguments.
2*We can determine the predicate's
meaning by:
1.how many arguments it may have
2.what role those arguments have
Ex. a window
A rope broke
a plate
all contain the verb break and a single
argument.
3*the breaking of: a window,a rope,a
plate are not identical events.
and a language might possibly have
different verbs to express the coming
apart of these. But English (break) can be
used with the names of all these things.
4*What a particular lexeme, such as
break, can mean depends on:
1. the lexemes it co-occurs with
2. and the relation it has with them.
The referring exps.(a window,rope,a plate)
have the same role, the same relation to
the verb break.
5*Syntactically this function can be called
the S. but semantically it is too general.
This role is called [the affected].
A referring exp. in the role of affected
tells:
1.what undergoes the action indicated by
the verb.
2. what is changed or affected by this
action.
Ex. Tom broke a window
Dick broke a rope
Harry broke a plate
The same fate for window,rope and plate.
Those NPs are syntactically the objs, of the
v., semantically they still have the role of
affected.
6*The referring exps.Tom, Dick and Harry
have the role of agent, which can be defined
as the part played by a referring exp. Tells
who or what:
1. instigates the action of the verb.
2.causes the affect of this action the
affected.
Different predicates;v., adj., prep. can be
described according to:
1. The number of (referring exps. Or
arguments) that can occur with them
2. and the roles these arguments have.
…………………………………………………………………..
Valency of the predicate is a theory
concerned with the description of the
number and types of arguments that a
predicate has.
Ex. The Predicate break, have variable
valency:
1. A valency of one in (A window broke).
2. And a valency of two in Tom broke a
window.
Ex. It is snowing.
My brother snores.
Chris is making an omelet.
Agnes is writing her mother a letter.
Here one sentence is longer than the one
before because it has more arguments.
Snow….zero valency
Sleep…..1
Make…..2
Write…..3
and each of them is typical of a whole group
of predicates.
…………………………………………………………………….
Valency zero 4.2.1
It is snowing
v./snow,s./ it, but it doesn’t name anything,
though it is a complete sentence.
English requires a subject, but this subject
does not correspond to anything in the
proposition.therefore snow is a zero-
argument verb.
Other zero-argument verbs are
It’s raining
It sleeted (yesterday
It has been thundering (in the west)
English requires the presence of it with The structure of this group:
weather verbs like rain,snow, sleet, Arg/ affected/grandfather,volcano,cake
thunder, but it does not refer to anything. Predicate/event/die, erupt, fail.
These verbs do not require some referent …………………………………………………………………
to be named in the sentence. Table 4.2:semantic roles:
Tense and aspect must be expressed 1. actor:
(rains, rained; is snowing, has been The role of an arg. that performs some
snowing). action without affecting any other entity.
indications of time and place can be added Ex/ Sylvia died.
(yesterday, in the west, etc.) 2. affected:
Here are similar sentences with a few The role of an arg. that undergoes a change
weather adjectives as predicates: due to some event or is affected by some
It’s windy (today). other entity.
It was rainy (all last month). Ex/ a window broke.
the propositions in which an inflection is Tom broke a window.
not part of a proposition can be Betty likes opera.
exemplified in: weather event….it is Opera delights betty.
snowing. 3. agent:
Weather condition….it is windy. The role of arg. that by its action affects
…………………………………………………………………. some other entity.
Valency one Ex/tom broke a window.
My brother snores. 4. associate:
v/snore, S/ my brother. Tells the status or identity of another arg.,
Snore is an intransitive verb that has a the theme
subject but no object. Ex/ roger is a student.
It is called here one-argument predicates: 5. effect:
The dog is sleeping Comes into existence through the action of
Larry laughed the predicate.
The earth rotates (on its axis) Ex/ Tillie baked a pie.
Other examples: 6. place:
giggle hum shiver weep whistle work Names the location in which the action of
Now let’s consider the role or roles that the predicate occurs.
the arguments have. Ex/ the fireman climbed a ladder.
the predicates sleep, laugh and rotate 7. theme:
express actions. It is the role of an arg. that is the topic of the
Ex. Sleep tells what the dog is doing. So the predicate that does not express action- a
dog is an actor that performs an action. stative predicate.
Argument/actor/dog/larry/actor. Ex/Audrey is a computer expert.
Predicate/action/sleep/laugh/rotate. …………………………………………………………………
The other group is: *One-argument adj. are numerous. Some of
Grandfather died (last week) them are used in the sentences that follow.
A volcano erupted 22.This soup is cold.
The cake fell 23.Terry is impatient.
We can say that those arguments 24.Henrietta was rather reckless.
(Grandfather/volcano/cake) did sth. 25.The bottle is empty.
The predicates(died/erupted/fell) tell what In this group the predicates are adj.phrases
they did in an event tell. a change in the which describe the entities named by their
condition of the entity named by the subjects.
Argument which undergoes this change, *In 24 the reckless may well be an
is affected by it. evaluation of Henrietta because of how she
acted.
*In 25, if the bottle is empty, that is likely
to be the result of a change, becoming
empty; but none of these predicates
express action or change, which are
dynamic processes;they simply describe
existing states.
*We might make a distinction here:
cold, empty, tall, heavy, blond + other
adj. are objective terms;
people will agree whether any of them is
applied accurately to a specific entity at a
specific time.
*Impatient, careless, clever, thoughtful,
pretty, tiresome + others involve
subjective evaluations; they are used when
people ascribe qualities or characteristics
to entities, + other people may or may not
agree.
*The S.of each sentence is simply the topic
or theme of what is said. The structure:
Arg/theme/soup/terry/henrietta/bottle
Predicate/description/cold/impatient/
reckless/ empty.
* Similarly, a referring exp. occurring after a
.form of be is a one-argument predicate
26.This man is a carpenter.
27.Dextrose and fructose are sugars.
28.Eddy Eckstein is the village idiot.
29.Cora and Willis are the class leaders
Each sentence in here has a referring exp. as
predicate.
*The predicate in some way provides an
identity for the entity named by the s., as 1
or more of a kind (a carpenter, sugars)
or as the only one or ones of the kind (the
village idiot, the class leaders). Structure:
arg./theme/man/dextrose+fructose/eddy
Eckstein/Cora and Willis.
Predicate/identity/carpenter/sugars/ village
idiot/class leaders.
*Sentences 28 +29 are equational
propositions.
Theme+identity can be reversed to create
sentences that differ only in focus:
Ex/The village idiot is Eddy Eckstein, The
class leaders are Cora and Willis.
*In some instances it is difficult to say
whether a particular sentence has the
structure Agent+Action or Affected+Event,
though the distinction is quite clear on the
whole.
*But the difference between the structures
Theme+Description and Theme+Identity is
not at all clear.
How much difference is there, really,
between these two?
30a Boris is Russian.
30b Boris is a Russian.
Week 3 ‫نقوصات‬
7.4. Denotation/Lyons.
1*the term'denotation' is employed by
many authors for reference; conversely,
others used 'reference' as denotation.
2*Part of the reason for this
terminological confusion, as Geach has
emphasized, is the failure of many authors
to distinguish clearly "between the
relations of a name to the thing named
+of a predicate to what it is true of" (1962:
6).
3*It might be argued that what Geach
calls "a sad tale of confusion" has already
gone too far+that, as he proposes, "so
battered + defaced a coin" as 'denotation'
should be "withdrawn from philosophical
currency" (1962: 55).
4*But it seems to be impossible to find an
alternative which is not equally battered
or defaced.
5*The usage adopted here is close to, or
identical with, that of such writers as Lewis
(1943; cf. Carnap, 1956: 45), Quine (i960:
9cm), Martin (1958) and Alston (1964; cf.
Lehrer & Lehrer, 1970: 25).
6*However,the treatment of denotation
given here is intended 2b philosophically
neutral.
*No more should be read into the term
'denotation' than it is definitely said to
imply.
7*There are many important differences in
the ways in which 'denotation' is defined
by the various authors referred to above.
8*(+in the 1st instance: the notion of
denotation in relation to lexemes),
denotation of a lexeme means:
the relationship that holds between that
lexeme + persons, things, places,
properties, processes + activities external
to the language-system.
9*Lyons used the term denotatum* for the
class of objects, properties, etc., to which
the exp. correctly applies.
*for grammatical convenience, he
construed 'denotatum' indifferently as a
mass n., a collective n., or a countable n.
as the occasion demands.
Ex/the denotatum of 'cow' is a particular
class of animals+that the individual
animals are its 'denotata';
that the denotatum of 'red' is a
particular property (viz. the colour
red),+
that its denotata are red objects
or, using the plural of 'denotatum'
now quite differently, various
subdivisions of the property (viz.
various shades of red).
10*There are all sorts of important
logical+philosophical distinctions
lurking behind this liberal+
grammatically convenient use of
the singular+plural of'denotatum'.
11*The status of the relationship
between denotation+reference, +
Denotation+sense,is not affected
by our failure to draw these
distinctions;+
we couldn’t do so without
philosophical commitment,except
at the cost of introducing a
further set of technical terms.
12*just 1 such philosophical
distinction: between the intension
+ extension of an exp.
*Many philosophers like Carnap,
(1956: 233)would say that the
extension of 'red' is the class of
all red objects+
That its intension is the property
of being red.
*The relationship between classes
+ properties (+ the possibility of
defining one in terms of the
other) is controversial.
*Carnap regards his distinction of
extension + intension as1 among
a number of possible
interpretations of Frege's
distinction of reference + sense.
*Our use of 'denotation', it must
be emphasized, is neutral as
between extension+intension.
Ex/we will normally say that 'dog'
denotes the class of dogs
(or perhaps some typical member,
or exemplar, of the class), but that
Canine' denotes the property, if
there is such a property, the
possession of which is a condition
of the correct application of the
exp.
*This use of 'denotation' to cover
both extension+ intension allows for
the adoption of a neutral position on
the question whether the predicate
calculus+class logic are equally
appropriate for the formalization of
descriptive semantics.
*It is compatible with, though it
neither implies nor depends upon,
the view that there is a fundamental
semantic difference between typical
adj. like 'red'+typical common n. like
'cow' (cf. Strawson, 1959: 168).
*How does denotation differ from
reference?
It was stressed that reference is an
utterance-bound relation+does not
hold of lexemes as such, but of
expressions in context.
*Denotation, on the other hand, like
sense, is a relation that applies in the
first instance to lexemes+holds
independently of particular occasions
of utterance.
Ex/a word like 'cow' in E.
Phrases like 'the cow', 'John's cow', or
'those three cows over there' may be
used to refer to individuals, whether
singly or in groups, but the word
'cow' alone cannot.
*the reference of exp. like 'the cow' is
context-dependent. +
the reference of phrases containing
'cow' is determined, in part, by the
denotation of 'cow'.
*ex/the phrase 'this cow' may, in
certain circumstances, be understood
by the hearer to mean:
"the object near us which belongs to
the class of objects which the lexeme
'cow' denotes".
*How the hearer knows that the word
'cow' denotes, or is applicable to, a
particular class of objects is a
separate issue;
there may or may not be some
unique+determinate intensional
definition that a speaker of E. is
intuitively aware of.
*The point is:E. common n. like 'cow' are not
normally used as referring exp.+this is true for
most other lexemes in the E. vocabulary.
*If they have denotation, it will determine
their reference when they are employed in
referring exp. But they do not have
reference as lexemes.
*To say that there is a distinction between
denotation+reference does not imply that
they are unconnected.
*Whatever may be referred to in a given l.
is generally within the denotation of
several lexemes in that l.
Ex/cows may be referred to in a variety of
ways; +the various classes to which they
belong are denoted, not only by 'cow', but
also by 'animal', mammal',etc.
*Many would claim that whatever may be
referred to in 1 language may be referred
to in any other l. + even that it will be
denoted by 1 or more lexemes in all l. ,
though in some instances perhaps only at
the most general level of the vocabulary.
*However it may be clear that reference+
denotation both depend in the same way
upon what the axiom of existence:
whatever is denoted by a lexeme must
exist, just as "whatever is referred to must
exist" (Searle, 1969: 77).
*It also seems evident that denotation+
reference are closely connected in the
acquisition of l.
*How is the denotation of a lexeme to be
specified by the descriptive linguist?
The short, practical answer is: in any way
that is likely to be successful.
Ex/the specification of the denotation of
'walrus',is cast in the form of a typical dict.
definition: "either of 2 species
(Odolenus rosmarus+Odolenus divergens)
of large, seal-like Arctic mammals, with
flippers + long tusks".
*Anyone knows the meaning of the other
words in it, would probably acquire as
good an understanding of the denotation
of 'walrus' as most other speakers of E.+
he might therefore use the word in
referring+ predicative exp.,otherwise, in
such a way that we should be justified in
saying that he knew its meaning.
Ex/a similar dict. definition of 'cow': "a
mature female bovine animal (of the
genus Bos)".
*Unless the user of the dict. is a
foreign zoologist who knew the
meaning of 'bovine', but not 'cow',
he would probably not be very
much helped by such an attempt
to explain to him the denotation
of 'cow'.
*We should be better off trying to
teach the denotation of 'cow' to
most non-E. speakers by means of
some denotational equivalent in
their own l. if existed or
by confronting them with a few
specimens (or pictures of them)
and perhaps drawing their
attention to 1 or 2 salient features
(the horns, the udders, etc.).
*The point being made is simply:
there may be no single correct +
practical way of specifying the
denotation of a lexeme.
Nor is it clear, in the present state
of theoretical semantics, that
there is in principle any way of
handling denotation in a uniform
manner.
*We could adopt the positivist
approach favoured by Bloomfield
+ others. But this would introduce
unnecessary + irrelevant criteria
into semantics.why?
For if there is 1 thing that seems
to be clear in this whole area, then
it would be:
the denotation of lexemes is not
generally determined by what
Bloomfleld called a
" scientifically accurate"
description of the denotata.
Nor the denotation of most
lexemes is determined solely, or
principally, by the physical
properties of their denotata.
*Much more important point is the role or
function of the objects, properties,
activities, processes +events in the life+
culture of the society using the l.
*Until we have a satisfactory theory of
culture, in the construction of which
sociology,cognitive + social psychology,
have played their part, it is idle to speculate
further about the possibility of constructing
anything more than a rather ad hoc
practical account of denotation of lexemes.
The distinction of denotation+
sense
*the relationship between 2 lexemes,
like 'cow'+ 'animal', is distinguished
from the relationship between the
lexeme bears + the class of objects it
denotes: the relationship between a
linguistic entity + sth. outside the l.-
system.
*The question is whether 1 of these two
kinds of relationship is derivable from the
other+ theoretically dispensable.
Attempts have been made to relate sense
+ denotation on the basis of the
traditional notion of signification* or
some modern (e.g., behaviourist) version
of it.
*But there are serious objections to
making (either sense or denotation) basic
in terms of the traditional triangle of
signification.
*It is assumed that the relationship of
denotation is logically + psychologically
basic so that:
Ex/ we know that 'cow'+'animal' are
related in sense in a certain way bcz of
our prior knowledge that the denotatum
of 'cow' is properly included in the
denotatum of 'animal')
*but if we assume so, we have to face the
problem of how we can know the sense
of words, such as 'unicorn', which have
no denotation.
*The fact that 'There is no such animal as
a unicorn' is a perfectly normal+
comprehensible sentence of E.(which may
be used to make what is probably a true
statement), whereas
'There is no such book as a unicorn'
is semantically odd, depends upon the
fact that 'unicorn'+'animal' (like 'cow'
+'animal') are related in sense, whereas
'unicorn'+'book' are not; speakers of E.
are aware of these sense-relations.
*it can be argued that, although 'Unicorn' has
no primary denotation, it has what might be
called a secondary denotation (cf. Goodman,
1952) ; We can draw a picture+ pointing
to the picture, say This is a unicorn;
*speakers of E. may agree or disagree
that what we have said is true, as
they may agree or disagree about an
alleged picture of a cow.
*But their ability to recognize our picture
of a mythical animal (if it is not directly
dependent upon their having seen
pictures of unicorns before) rests upon
their understanding of the sense of
'unicorn'+ in particular upon their
knowledge of its relations with such words
as 'horse', 'horn , etc. + their ability to
identify the denotata of these words.
*because we know the sense of 'unicorn ,
we know what kind of object it would
apply to, if there were anything in the
world for it to apply to.
*we interpreted this as a definition of the
denotation of walrus.
*But in order to apply it, we need to know
the sense of many of the component
lexemes in the definition+ we can learn
the sense of 'walrus (its relationship with
such words as 'seal +'mammal ) without
knowing whether it has a denotation or
not. Sense, then, in some cases at least is
epistemologically prior to denotation.
*We might therefore consider the
alternative method of reduction:
that of taking sense to be basic in all
instances + treating denotation as a
derivative relation.
*But there are problems here too.
* We first learn the use of many words in
relation to the persons+objects around us;
+ we learn the denotation of some of
these words, it seems clear, before we can
relate them in sense to other words in the
vocabulary.
*It is not more correct to say that denotation is
wholly dependent upon sense than it is to say
that sense is wholly dependent upon
denotation.
*Not everyone will agree with about the
necessity of taking sense + denotation to be
interdependent, but equally basic, relations.
*Should it prove possible, within some
philosophical theory of meaning, to derive the
one satisfactorily from the other or both from
some more basic notion, it is at least
terminologically convenient for the linguist to
distinguish these 2 aspects of the meaning of
lexemes.
*He can use the 2 terms to avoid commitment
on the philosophical+psychological issues
involved in the controversy between
nominalism+realism.
*One further point in connexion
with words which lack or may lack
denotation.
*Much of the philosophical
discussion of this question has
been directed towards the
analysis of the meaning of such
words as * unicorn'.
*The fact that 'unicorn', etc., have
no extension in the actual world
can be treated as irrelevant within
any theory of semantics which
allows for the relativization of
truth +denotation to possible
worlds.
*But it is perhaps more instructive
to consider a word like 'intelligent'
(or 'honest', or 'beautiful').
*Does 'intelligent' denote some
real property or attribute of
persons (+perhaps animals+
machines) as, we may assume,
'red-haired' does? Is it not
possible that the word 'intelligent'
is used by speakers of E. in a
variety of circumstances, among
which we can perhaps discern
certain family resemblances
(Wittgenstein1953)
but which have no common
defining property?
*It is certainly the case that there are l.
in which there is no satisfactory
translation equivalent to the E.
'intelligent'.
Ex/In Plato's Greek,the nearest
equivalents are:
' sophos' which is much wider +
' eumathes'; which is somewhat
narrower, in application (Lyons, 1963).
*adj. such as 'dangerous', regardless
of whether it is readily translatable
into all l. or not, can hardly be said to
denote an inherent property of the
objects or situations to which it is
applied. *The linguist, whether he is
working as a theoretical or descriptive
semanticist, need not be concerned to
answer the question whether
'intelligent' +other lexemes denote
some identifiable property or not. But
if there are problems involved in
assuming that they do.
*It would be a mistake to say that no
lexemes have denotation, or that
denotation is irrelevant in linguistic
semantics, or that all lexemes must
have denotation.
*But denotation is just one part of a
wider+ more complex relationship
which holds between l. + the world
(or between l. + the set of possible
Worlds)
*We live in the world + we are part of
it +we use l, not only to describe the
persons, things+ situations in the
physical world+ the world of social
activity with which we interact in our
daily life, but also to control+ adjust
to them in a variety of ways.
*The descriptive function of l. is
important but it is not the sole
function of l.
*If we use the term applicability* for
the admittedly rather ill-defined
wider relationship that holds between
l.+ the external world we can say that
a particular lexeme (or exp. or whole
utterance) is applicable* (i.e. may be
correctly applied) in a certain context,
situational or linguistic + that it is
applicable to individuals or
properties of individuals.
*We may use the term 'applicability',
in fact, for any relation that can be
established between elements or
units of l. (including the prosodic*+
paralinguistic* features of utterances)
+ entities in, or aspects of, the world
in which the language operates.
*If we consider the applicability of a
lexeme with respect to the question
whether it is true of the entity to
which it is applied, we are concerned
with its denotation.
*If we consider the applicability of an
exp. with respect to the question
whether it is intended to identify
some entity or group of entities
about which sth. is being said, or
some question is being asked, etc.,
on some particular occasion, we are
concerned with its reference.
*But words may be correctly + incorrectly
applied to persons + things + other
features of the external world, for all sorts
of reasons, some of which have nothing to
do with their denotation.
……………………………………………………………
*Denotation is also clearly relevant to
certain exp. which may be substituted for
single lexemes in sentences+ may be
denotationally equivalent to, or
denotationally narrower or wider than, the
lexemes for which they are substituted.
Ex/'dark red' is denotationally narrower
than 'red'
as 'red book' is narrower in denotation
than either 'red' or 'book'.
A traditional Ex/'Featherless biped'
+'rational animal' are perhaps
denotationally equivalent+ each of them
is perhaps denotationally equivalent to
'human being' (or 'man' in its wider
sense).
Ex/'Deciduous tree' is denotationally wider
than 'oak', 'beech' or 'sycamore'.
*The denotation of such exp. such can
generally be accounted for in terms of the
logical conjunction or disjunction of the
denotations of their constituent lexemes+
formalized in terms of the logic of classes.
*the term 'denotation' has been employed
with respect to lexemes+ exp. considered
independently of their function in
sentences or utterances.
*The question is whether it can be
consistently+ usefully extended to both
predicative+ referring exp.
*As far as predicative exp. are concerned,
this extension seems 2b straightforward.
For denotation +predication are closely
related notions.
*When we ascribe a property to an
individual, we do so in the simplest cases
by predicating of the individual a lexeme
or exp. denoting the property in question.
Ex/when we utter the sentence
'The man drinking a martini is a crook'
to make an assertion about a particular
individual we are predicating of him the
lexeme 'crook'+we can just ask what is
the denotation of the exp '(be) a crook' as
we can what does 'crook' denote.
*The answer in both cases is the
same; or, the denotation of
'(be) a crook' is the intension of
the class whose extension is the
denotatum of 'crook'.
*Subject to the existence of the
correlated property or class
(under some appropriate
interpretation of 'existence'),
complex predicative exp. like '(be)
the first man to climb Mount
Everest' or 'break the bank at
Monte Carlo' can also be said to
have a denotation.
*It is less clear that referring exp.
have denotation in the sense in
which we are using the term
'denotation'.
*Proper names, when they are
employed as referring exp,identify
their referents, not by describing
them in terms of some relevant
property or properties which the
name denotes, but by utilizing the
unique+ arbitrary association
which holds between a name and
its bearer.
*We could say that the denotatum
of a name is the class of
individuals to which the name is
correctly applied.
*We could also say that to be
called such-and- such is to have a
certain property just as being of a
certain size, shape, etc.
*or having been involved in
certain processes,actions, states-
of-affairs, etc., is to have a certain
property (in the rather liberal
sense of the term 'property').
*This would enable us to account
naturally for the parallelism
between:
'There are 12 chairs in this room'+
'There are12Horaces in this room'.
*But this would tend to obscure
important differences between
denotation +other kinds of
applicability: a name is not true of
its bearer.
*Personal+ demonstrative pronouns,
like proper names, are used as
referring exp; they differ from proper
names + exp like 'the Morning Star'+
many titles in that their reference is
more obviously utterance dependent.
*But it would be rather odd to talk of
the denotation of 'he' or the pronoun
'this' (+still more so of ' I ' or 'you') in
E. as sth. distinct from their reference,
since the conditions of correct
application would be referential
conditions.
*The class of individuals to which 'he'
may be correctly applied is the class
of individuals that may be referred to
(whether deictically* or anaphorically,
by means of 'he' which is not true of
these individuals.
*The third main class of referring exp.
is that of descriptive NPs+
philosophers have often said that
referring exp of this kind have, or
subject to the axiom of existence, a
denotation.
*For Russell, a definite descripton was
said to denote an individual if that
individual fitted the description
uniquely.
*Donnellan (1966) adopts Russell's
definition of denotation (without
however accepting the condition of
uniqueness)+ uses it to draw a
distinction that Russell did not draw
between reference+ denotation.
*Donnellan maintains that an exp.
may be used successfully to refer to
an individual even though there is no
individual that fits the description+
conversely that an individual may fit a
definite description+ be denoted,
though not necessarily referred to, by
it.
*In standard cases, however, an exp.
like 'the man drinking a martini', if it
is used to refer, will refer to the
individual (or one of the individuals)
that it denotes.
*the principal points made by Donnellan in
terms of his distinction of reference+
denotation are valid,but the question remains
whether the definite NP can be said to have a
denotation.
*It seems preferable, on our interpretation
of denotation, to say that it is the complex
predicative exp.
' (be) a man drinking a martini' which has
denotation +that its denotation is a
function of the denotation of the exp
'(be) a man' + ' (be) drinking a martini');+
that the use of the definite NP to refer to
an individual implies or presupposes that
the complex predicative exp is true of the
individual in question.
*We can choose to define 'denotation' in
the one way or the other. But, if we decide
to use the term as we have been doing
throughout this section, we cannot
consistently apply it to referring exp.
*It goes without saying, however, that
many philosophers, if they use the term
'denotation' at all, would probably prefer
to link it more closely to 'reference'.
 Saeed/week2
2.4.2 concepts
1*If we adopt the hypothesis that the
meaning of, say, a n. is a combination of its
denotation+ a conceptual element, then from
the point of view of a linguist,2 basic
questions about the conceptual element are:
1.What form can we assign to concepts?
2.How do children acquire them, along with
their linguistic labels?
In our discussion we will concentrate on
concepts that correspond to a single word,
that is, they are lexicalized.
*not all concepts are like this:
some concepts are described by phrases, as
with the underlined concept in:
ex/On the shopping channel, I saw a tool for
compacting dead leaves into garden statuary.
*the reason why some concepts are
lexicalized + others not is utility.
*If we refer to sth. enough it will become
lexicalized.
*Possibly somebody once said sth. like:
Ex/We’re designing a device for cooking food
by microwaves.
*describing sth. that was given 2-word label
microwave oven, but is now usually called a
microwave.
*Presumably if every home ends up having a
tool to turn leaves into statues, a name for it
will be invented and catch on.
*We see this process happening all the time
as new concepts are invented +new words or
new senses of old words given to them.
Ex of such a recent introduction is selfie:
a self-portrait photograph+
a notion brought to prominence by the
ubiquity of smartphones(which is also a new
word in E).
*in children acquiring concepts we have to
recognize that their cocepts may differ from
the concepts of adults.
*Work in developmental psychology has
shown that children may operate with
concepts that are quite different:
Students of child l. describe children both
underextending concepts.
Ex/ a child dog can only be used for their pet,
not the one next door.
*overextending: he uses daddy for every
male adult,or cat for cats,rabbits+other pets.
*Or the concepts may be different,
reflecting the fact that items in a child’s
world may have different salience than
for an adult.
………………………………………………………………..
2.4.3 Necessary+ sufficient conditions
*One traditional approach to describing
concepts is to define them by using sets
of necessary + sufficient conditions.
*This approach comes from thinking
about concepts as follows:
A concept like WOMAN, must contain
the information necessary to decide
when sth. in the world is a woman or not
*How can this information be organized?
Perhaps as a set of characteristics or
attributes, that is:
x is a woman if + only if L .
where L is a list of attributes, like:
x is human;
x is adult;
x is female, etc.
*One can see these attributes as
conditions:
1.necessary conditions:
If sth. must have them to be a woman.
2.sufficient conditions:
If we can find the right set, so that just
that set is enough to define a woman.
*we have identified the right amount of
information for the concept.
……………………………………………………….
*So this theory views concepts as lists of
bits of knowledge:
the necessary+sufficient conditions for
sth. to be an example of that concept.
………………………………………………………..
*One major problem with this approach:
that it seems to assume that if speakers
share the same concept they will agree
on the necessary+ sufficient conditions:
if sth. has them, it is an X; if not, it is not.
*But it has proved difficult to set these
up even for n. which identify concrete+
natural kinds like dog or cat.
Ex/ with the N. zebra, we might agree on
some attributes:
is an animal,
has four legs,
is striped,
is a herbivore, etc.
*The problem is:
which of these is necessary?
The first obviously.
But the rest are more problematic.
If we find in a herd of zebra, one that
is pure white or black, we might still
want to call it a zebra.
*Or if by some birth defect, a three-
legged zebra came into the world, it
would still be a zebra.
*Similarly, if a single zebra got bored
with a grass diet+ started to include
a few insects, would it cease to be a
zebra?
*These, you might think, are rather
whimsical questions+ perhaps
problems for philosophers rather
than linguists.
*zebra example is just a version of
Saul Kripke’s ex about tigers (Kripke
1980), or Putnam’s fantasy about cats
(1962).
*If we suddenly discovered that cats
had always been automata rather
than animals, would the meaning of
the word cat be different?
* such Questions have important
consequences for our ideas about
concepts:
if we cannot establish a mutual
definition of a concept, how can we
use its linguistic label?
…………………………………………………………
*Another argument against necessary
+sufficient conditions as the basis for
linguistic concepts is Putnam’s (1975)
observations about ignorance.
*Speakers often use words to refer
despite knowing very little+
sometimes nothing, about the
identifying characteristics of the
referent.
*Putnam’s ex include the tree names
Beech+ elm:
*like Putnam,many E speakers cannot
distinguish between these 2 trees yet
use the words regularly.
*Such a speaker would presumably
be understood+be speaking
truthfully, if she said:
In the 1970s Dutch elm disease killed
a huge number of British elms.
*Perhaps as Putnam suggests, we rely on a
belief that somewhere there are experts
who do have such knowledge + can tell the
difference between different species of tree.
*It seems, as with other natural kind terms
like gold or platinum, we can use the words
without knowing very much about the
referent.
*It seems unlikely then that a word is
referring to a concept composed of a set of
necessary+ sufficient conditions, or what
amounts to the same thing, a definition.
*This approach is often termed the
definitional theory of concepts.
*This is reminiscent of the use of names:
one of the advantages claimed for the causal
theory of names over the description theory
is that it allows for speaker ignorance:
we can use a name for a person or place
knowing little or nothing about the referent.
*This parallel is overtly recognized by writers:
Putnam (1975)+ Kripke (1980).
*they have proposed that the causal theory
be extended to natural kind terms.
*The idea is that natural kind terms, like
names, are originally fixed by contact with ex
of the kind.
*Thereafter, speakers may receive or borrow
the word without being exposed to the real
thing, or knowing very much about its
characteristics.
*As we have seen, philosophers like to use ex
of metals like gold or silver.
*Any inability to identify correctly or define
the substance silver does not prevent one
from using the word silver.
*We assume that someone once had the
ability or need to recognize the individual
metal +
*that somewhere there are experts who can
identify it empirically.(Putnam’s“division of
labor” in a speech community):
between “expert” +“folk” uses of a term.
*Only the expert or scientific uses of a word
would ever be rigorous enough to support
necessary +sufficient conditions, but
*speakers happily go on using the word.
2.4.4 Prototypes
*Because of problems with necessary+
sufficient conditions, or definitions,
several more sophisticated theories of
concepts have been proposed.
*One influential proposal is due to
Eleanor Rosch+her co-workers (Rosch
1973) who have suggested the notion of
prototypes.
*A model of concepts which views them
as structured so that there are central or
typical members of a category, such as
BIRD or FURNITURE,
but then a shading off into less typical or
peripheral members.
Ex/ chair is a more central member of
the category FURNITURE than lamp.
Ex/ sparrow a more typical member of
the category BIRD than penguin.
*This approach have been supported by
Rosch’s experimental evidence:
*speakers tend to agree more readily on
typical members than on less typical
members; they come to mind more
quickly, and so on.
*Another result of this + similar work
(Labov 1973) is that:
the boundaries between concepts can
seem to speakers uncertain, or“fuzzy,”
rather than clearly defined.
*This approach allows for borderline
uncertainty: an item in the world might
bear some resemblance to 2 different
prototypes.
Ex/ an English speaker is able to use the
word whale, but unsure about whether a
whale is a mammal or a fish :
1. In the prototype theory of concepts,
this might be explained by the fact that
whales are not typical of the category
MAMMAL , being far from the central
prototype.
2. At the same time, whales resemble
prototypical fish in some characteristic
features: they live underwater in the
oceans, have fins, and so on.
*There are interpretations of these
typicality effects in the psychology
literature:
some researchers have argued that the
central prototype is an abstraction.
for example Gelman and
*This abstraction might be a set of
characteristic features, to which we
compare real items.
*These characteristic features of BIRD
might describe a kind of average
bird:
small perhaps, with wings,feathers,
the ability to fly + so on, but of no
particular species.
…………………………………………………….
*Other researchers have proposed
that we organize our categories by
exemplars, memories of actual
typical birds, say sparrows, pigeons+
hawks+ we compute the likelihood of
sth we meet as a bird on the basis of
comparison with these memories of
real birds.
*There is another approach to
typicality effects from within
linguistics, which is interesting bcz of
the light it sheds on the relationship
between linguistic knowledge +
encyclopedic knowledge.
*Charles Fillmore (1982)+
George Lakoff (1987) make similar
claims that speakers have folk
theories about the world, based on
their experience+ rooted in their
culture.
*These theories are called frames by
Fillmore + idealized cognitive models
(ICMs) by Lakoff.
*They are not scientific theories or
logically consistent definitions, but
collections of cultural views.
Ex/Fillmore gives an example of how
these folk theories might work by
using the word bachelor:
some bachelors are more
prototypical than others
with the Pope, for example, being far
from prototypical.
*Fillmore+ Lakoff in his discussion of
the same point,suggest that there is a
division of our knowledge about the
word bachelor:
1.part is a dict-type definition
(perhaps simply “an unmarried man”)
which is called linguistic or semantic
knowledge.
2. and part is an encyclopedia-type entry of
cultural knowledge about
bachelorhood+marriage) the frame or ICM).
Which is called real world or general
knowledge.
*Their point is we only apply the word
bachelor within a typical marriage ICM:
a monogamous union between eligible
people, typically involving romantic love, and
so on.
*the idealized model, a form of general
knowledge, governs our use of the word
bachelor+ restrains us from applying it to
celibate priests, or people living in isolation
like Robinson Crusoe on his island, or Tarzan
living among apes in the jungle.
*so In this view, using a word involves
combining semantic knowledge+
encyclopedic knowledge, +this interaction
may result in typicality effects.
*Prototype theory, 8 frame+ ICMs are just a
few of the large number of proposals for
conceptual structure.
…………………………………………………………………….
2.4.5 Relations between concepts
* it is reasonable to assume that conceptual
structures are similarly linked.
Ex/ if all you know about peccary is that it is
a kind of wild pig +
of pecorino that it is a kind of Italian cheese,
then your knowledge of these concepts
“inherits” knowledge you have about pigs+
cheese.
*This has implications of how much
knowledge a speaker has to have in order to
use a word.
*It suggests that the crucial element is not
the amount of knowledge but its integration
into existing knowledge.
*Thus, knowing that a peccary is a kind of
pig, together with what you know about pigs,
is perhaps enough to begin to understand
the meaning of sentences containing the
word + thereby to start to gain extra
knowledge about the concept.
*Such relations between concepts have been
used to motivate models of conceptual
hierarchies in the cognitive psychology
literature.
*Research has shown the importance of such
hierarchies in reasoning+ learning.
ex/ in a conceptual hierarchy for living
things the concept BIRD will have
such attributes as:
has wings, can fly,has feathers, lays eggs,
has a beak.
*It does not have to specify attributes
such as living organism, has senses, bcz
it will inherit these from a higher
concept in the hierarchy, ANIMAL .
*Concepts lower in the hierarchy such as
ROBIN + EAGLE need not specify any of
these attributes.
*The concept PENGUIN however will
specify cannot fly.
*Such hierarchical conceptual structure
allows individuals to perceive entities as
ex of types +
to make predictions about their nature+
behavior without direct observation.
*If the attributes in this model are taken
to be the equivalent of the necessary+
sufficient conditions, then it suffers from
the disadvantages of that approach.
*Proponents of prototype theory, for ex
Rosch et al(1976),have also investigated
conceptual hierarchies+ have proposed
that such hierarchies contain 3 levels of
generality: a superordinate level, a basic
level, and a subordinate level.
*The idea is that the levels differ in their
balance between informativeness+
usefulness.
Ex/ from Rosch et al. :
Furniture:
1.the superordinate level is FURNITURE ,
2.has relatively few characteristic
Features
3.the basic level would include concepts
like CHAIR , which has more features,
4.the subordinate level would include
concepts like ARMCHAIR , DINING
CHAIR + so on, which have still more
features+ are thus more specific again.
………………………………………………………….
*The basic level is identified as cognitively
important:
1.it is the level that is most used in everyday
life
2. it is acquired first by children
3. in experiments it is the level at which
adults spontaneously name objects; such
objects are recognized more quickly in tests;
and so on.
*This model has proved to be very
robust in the psychological literature,
though the simple picture presented
here needs some modifications.
*It seems that the relationship
between the basic level+ the
intermediate term might vary from
domain to domain:
1.man-made categories like
FURNITURE differ somewhat from
2.natural kind terms, and the
relationship may vary depending on
the person’s experience of the
categories.
*So a person’s expert knowledge of a
domain might influence the
relationship between the basic+
subordinate levels.
Ex/Tanaka+ Taylor (1991)
for a study suggesting that experts
on dogs +birds might have a
different, richer structure at
subordinate levels for these
categories from the average
person.
…………………………………………………………..
2.4.6 Acquiring concepts
*How do we acquire concepts?
One simple + intuitively satisfying
theory is that we do it by ostensive
definition.
*This is the idea that children+adults
acquire concepts by being directed
to examples in the world.
*So if you are walking with a child+
you see a dog, you say That’s a dog
or Look at the doggie!
and the child begins to acquire the
concept DOG , which is filled out by
subsequent experience of dogs.
………………………………………………………
*This common-sense picture cannot be the
whole story, however.
*The philosopher W. V. O. Quine (1960) has
pointed out that ostension (defining by
example) is usually couched in l.
*his ex/when walking with someone whose l.
you do not know who+ when a rabbit runs
past, says Gavagai.
You do not know whether it is a
warning or instruction, or what the
content might be:
“They are a menace,” “They are good to eat,”
“Wow, that scared me,” and so on.
*To understand that you are given a name
you need to know sth about the l. that the
ostension takes place in.
Ex/So in E, a sentence frame like “It’s a”
tells you this.
*Similarly, you cannot even tell what is being
pointed to without some linguistic support:
is it the whole rabbit, its tail, or the way it is
running?
*The point is that even ostensive definition
depends on prior knowledge of some word
meanings.
*Where do these come from? Are we forced
to admit that we may be born with certain
basic concepts innately within us?
we can merely point out that the acquisition
of concepts must be a more complicated
process than simple ostension.
……………………………………………………………………
1. 2.6 Utterances, sentences + propositions
*These three terms are used to describe
different levels of language.
*utterance:
1.is the most concrete.
2.created by speaking (or writing) a piece of
language.
3.If I say:
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
this is one utterance.
4.If another person in the same room also
says Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, then
we would be dealing with two utterances.
*Sentences:
1.are abstract grammatical elements obtained
from utterances.
2.abstract because if a 3rd + 4th person in the
room also say
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
with the same intonation, then they are four
utterances of the same sentence.
3.sentences are abstracted, or generalized,
from actual l. use.
4.ex/ direct quotation.
If someone reports He said “Ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny,” she is unlikely to mimic
the original speaker exactly.
*she will use her normal voice+ thus filter out
certain types of information:
a.the difference in pitch levels between men,
women+ children.
b.perhaps some accent differences due to regional
or social variation. c. certainly those phonetic details
which identify individual speakers.
*Speakers seem to recognize that at the
level of the sentence these kinds of
information are not important, and so
discard them.
*So we can look at sentences:
from the speaker's point of view, where
they are abstract elements to be made
real by uttering them.
or from the hearer’s point of view,
where they are abstract elements
reached by filtering out certain kinds of
information from utterances.
*One further step of abstraction is
possible for special purposes: to identify
propositions.
*In trying to establish rules of valid
deduction, logicians discovered that
certain elements of grammatical
information in sentences were irrelevant.
Ex/ the difference between active+
passive sentences:
1.Caesar invaded Gaul.
2.Gaul was invaded by Caesar.
From a logician’s perspective, these
sentences are equivalent, for whenever 1
is true, so is 2.
*Thus the grammatical differences
between them will never be significant in
a chain of reasoning + can be ignored.
*Other irrelevant information(for these
purposes) includes what is called
information structure,
Ex/ the difference between:
1.It was Gaul that Caesar invaded.
2.It was Caesar that invaded Gaul.
3.What Caesar invaded was Gaul.
4.The one who invaded Gaul was Caesar.
These sentences seem to share a
description of the same state of affairs.
*Once again,if one is true all are true+
if one is false then all are false.
*To capture this fact, logicians identify a
common proposition that can be
represented in various special ways to
avoid confusion with the various
sentences that represent it.
Ex/by using capitals:
5. CAESAR INVADED GAUL.
*the proposition underlying the
The war ended might be written:
6. THE WAR ENDED.
*Logicians commonly use formulae for
propositions in which
the v. is viewed as a function+
its subject + any objects as arguments of
the function.
*Such formulae often delete verb
endings, articles+ other grammatical
elements, so that
corresponding to 5+6 we would get 7+8:
7. invade (caesar, gaul)
8. end (war)
*Some semanticists have borrowed from
logicians both:
this notion of proposition+
the use of logical formulae.
*Some linguists employ this notion of
proposition in their semantic analysis,
often to identify a description of an event
or situation that might be a shared
element in different sentences.
Ex/ the statement:
Joan made the sorbet
the question:
Did Joan make the sorbet?
the command:
Joan, make the sorbet!
share a propositional element:
JOAN MAKE THE SORBET.
*In this view, these different sentences
allow the speaker to do different things
with the same proposition:
to assert it as a past event
to question it
or to request someone to bring it about.
*Propositions then can be away of
capturing part of the meaning of
sentences.
*They are more abstract than sentences
because the same proposition can be
represented by several different
statements. *Moreover, in non-
statements like questions, orders, etc.,
they cannot be the complete meaning.
Why?
Since such sentences include an
indication of the speaker’s attitude to the
proposition.To sum up: utterances are
real pieces of speech.
1. By filtering out certain types of
(especially phonetic) information we can
get to abstract grammatical elements,
sentences.
2. By going on to filter out certain types
of grammatical information, we can get
to propositions, which are descriptions of
states of affairs and which some writers
see as a basic element of sentence
meaning.
 Palmer/ word & sentence‫نقوصات‬
2.4/ The word
*Dict are concerned with stating the
meanings of words+ it is, therefore,
reasonable to assume that the word is one of
the basic units of semantics.
*Yet there are difficulties.
*First, not all words have the same kind of
meaning as others; some seem to have little
or none.
Ex/Boys like to play.
it is easy enough to consider what might be
the meaning of(boys, like+play) but what is
the meaning of to?
*It has been argued that meaning implies
choice +that while we can replace(boys, like
+play) by
(girls, hate +fight), to cannot be replaced by
anything, but it is wholly predictable in this
environment+has no meaning at all.
*The 19th century E. grammarian, Henry Sweet
(1891: 22) drew a distinction between 'full'
words +'form' words.
*full words =tree, sing, blue, gently.
*form words =it, the, of, and.
*only the full words have the kind of
meaning that we would expect to find in a
dictionary.
*The form words belong rather to the
grammar+ have only 'grammatical' meaning.
*Such meaning cannot be stated in isolation,
but only in relation to other words+ even
sometimes to the whole sentence.
*The word, moreover, is not a clearly defined
linguistic unit.
*It is to some degree purely conventional,
defined in terms of the spaces in the written
text.
*This spacing is not wholly arbitrary+ there
are several sound reasons why we make the
divisions as we do.
*One signal in the spoken l. is stress, in that
one word seems to allow only one main
stress+ we can, for that reason, treat
blackbird =1 word
black bird= 2.
*But there is no complete correlation
between the spoken+ the written form
Ex/The White House
or by compounds: shoeblack, shohorn +
shoe polish, all with a single stress.
*Bloomfield (1933: 178) offered a
solution by suggesting that the word =
the 'minimum free form'
the smallest form that may occur in
isolation.
*But this all depends on what is meant
by 'in isolation'.
Ex/we shall not normally say the, is, by
in isolation.
*We might produce these 'words' in
reply to a question such as What is the
2nd word here? Or
Did you say 'a' or 'the'?
*But this just begs the question.
*We learn to utter in isolation just those
items that we have learnt to recognise as
words.
*Bloomfield also suggested that we
should look for an element smaller than
the word, a unit of meaning;
the morpheme:
ex/ -berry in blackberry or -y in Johnny.
*Later linguists were more interested in
the status of such words as loved where
they could identify the morphemes
love- + -d.
*Here the 2 elements seem clearly to
have the distinct meanings of:
'adore'+'past'.
*But problems soon arose with words
such as took, which appears to be both
'take'+'past', yet cannot be segmented
in any obvious way into 2 parts each
with its own meaning.
*The best way to handle this is not in
terms of morphemes
(i.e. parts of words), but rather by
redefining the term word in a different,
though not unfamiliar way.
*We have been using this term in the
sense that love+loved are different
words.
*But we could also say that they are
forms of the same word: the v. 'to love'
which, oddly enough, we identify by
using 2 words, to+love).
*A technical term for the word in this 2nd
sense is LEXEME.
*It is lexemes that usually provide dict.
headings.
*There are not 2 entries for love+
loved, but one only.
*+ this may even include the n. love
as well as the v. though we may not
wish to extend the term lexeme in a
similar way.
*If we proceed on these lines we can
talk about the meaning of words
(lexemes)+ independently of the
meaning of grammatical elements
such as plural or past tense.
*Instead of treating loved as the 2
morphemes love- + -d, we shall
analyse it in terms of the lexeme love
+the grammatical category of tense.
*This solution leaves us with the word
(defined as the lexeme) as the unit
for our dict. + completely avoids the
problem of identifying the separate
elements of took.
*But we are still left with the status of
compounds.
*Even if we can identify elements
within the word without actually
segmenting the word itself, there are
still problems about stating the
meaning of the elements.
*The grammatical elements, like the
grammatical words considered
earlier, often seem to have little or no
meaning.
*In some cases the meaning seems
to be fairly simple + independent:
more than one' for plural; yet even
this is not entirely true, while gender
is often only superficially related to
sex.
*other grammatical elements are
almost devoid of any recognisable
meaning: in Latin, which for the most
part simply indicate grammatical
relations within the sentence - the
subject, the object, etc.
*There are even some elements
within words that aren’t grammatical
yet equally have little or no meaning.
*Bloomfield was particularly
concerned about the status of
cran- in cranberry, which have no
independent meaning+ does not
occur in any other words.
*He might well have been concerned with
straw- + goose- in strawberry+gooseberry,
which have nothing to do with straw or
geese.
*In contrast black- in blackberry can be
related both in form+ in meaning to the 1st
elements of blackbird + blackboard.
*An interesting trio is greenfinch, bullfinch
and chaffinch =names of finches.
*In greenfinch, green- =its colour
in bullfinch the first element can be
identified, but has little connection with bulls.
*while the 1st element of chaffinch seems to
have no meaning at all.
*Even more striking there are many words in
E. that are called PHONAESTHETic, in which1
part, often the initial cluster of consonants,
gives an indication of meaning of a rather
special kind.
*Thus many words beginning with si- are
'slippery' in some way :
slide, slip, slither, slush, sluice, sludge, etc.,
*or else they are merely pejorative :
slattern, slut, slang, sly, sloppy,slovenly, etc.
*The sk- words refer to surfaces or
superficiality:
skate, skimp, skid, skim, skin, etc.
*The reader may consider also the meaning
of words beginning with sn-, str-, sw-, tw,-etc.
*An amusing set is that which ends in -ump;
almost all refer to some kind of roundish
mass: plump, chump, rump,hump, lump,
bump, stump + even perhaps dump+mumps.
*But we cannot generalise too far. Not every
word with these phonological characteristics
will have the meaning suggested,moreover,
we cannot separate this part+ state the
meaning of the remainder.
Ex/the meaning of -ide in slide or
-ate in skate.
*There is no consistency about the number of
semantic units we may recognise within a
word.
*Although we have ram/ ewe, stallion/ mare,
we have no similar pairs for giraffe or
elephant. We have to say male giraffe, female
giraffe, or if we know the correct term bull
elephant and cow elephant.
*Such considerations, together with the fact
that we have the words cow+ calf, may lead
us to define bull as male adult bovine animal.
*to see this as an indication of 4 distinct
elements of meaning in the same word.
*This point is related to the distinction
made by Ullmann (1962) between
TRANSPARENT+OPAQUE words.
*Transparent words are those whose
meaning can be determined from the
meaning of their parts, opaque words
those for which this is not possible.
Ex/chopper+ doorman are transparent,
but axe + porter are opaque.
*Comparison with other l, German in
particular, is interesting.
In E: thimble, glove +linguistics are
opaque
(the same is true of the equivalent
French words)
in German the corresponding words are
all transparent:
Fingerhut ('finger-hat'), Handschuh
('hand-shoe'), Sprachwissenschaft
('language-science').
*But there are degrees of transparency+
opacity.
Ex/A chopper may indeed be an
instrument that chops, but does a
screwdriver actually DRIVE screws?
*What are we to say of
spanner+hammer }The -er ending looks
as if it is the indication of an instrument,
but (a spanner spans) only in a now
obsolete sense of span ('wind up')
while a hammer does not 'ham' at all.
*Similar comments can be made about
the -herry + -finch words.
*We can, then, hardly use transparent
words to decide what are the semantic
elements within opaque ones; we should
not wish to argue for the analysis of
thimble on the basis of Fingerhut.
*Finally, IDIOMS are some whole groups
of words that must be taken together to
establish meaning.
*Idioms are sequences of words whose
meaning cannot be predicted from the
meanings of the words themselves.
Ex/kick the bucket, fly off the handle,
spill the beans,red herring.
*we can't say kick the table, fly off the
roof, spill the coffee, red fish.
*Semantically, idioms are single units,
but they are not single grammatical
units like words, for there is no past
tense ^kick the bucketed.
*Sometimes semantic division seems
to 'override' word division.
Ex/heavy smoker + good singer.
*Semantically these are not heavy +
smoker (a smoker who is heavy)
Good singer (a singer who is good).
*The meaning is one who smokes
heavily or sings well.
*if we divide, it will be between heavy
smok- + -er, good sing- + -er, if we
want to retain the parallelism
between the form + the meaning.
*An alternative solution would be in
terms of deep structure, which allows
the statement of the meaning of
heavy smoker in terms of X smokes
heavily.
*But this might not be so easy with
ex like : artificial florist+
criminal lawyer.
*All these considerations suggest that
we should abandon the idea that the
word is a natural unit for semantics,
however useful it may be for the
dictionary maker.
*Bazell 1966 commented:
'To seek a semantic unit within the
boundaries of the word simply
because these boundaries are clearer
than others is like looking for a lost
ball on the lawn simply because the
thicket provides poor ground for
such a search.'
*But we cannot proceed without
some kind of lexical unit+ the lexeme
seems the most obvious one, even if
its definition may on occasions be
arbitrary+ if the meaning of
sequences of words is not always
(wholly) predictable from the lexemes
contained in them.
 2.5 The sentence
*Apart from all the problems concerning the
word itself, the question is whether the basic
unit of meaning is not the word, but the
sentence.
*For with sentences we communicate+ this is
reflected in the traditional definition of the
sentence as 'the exp. of a complete thought'.
*If words have meaning, it is derived from
their function as parts of sentences.
*Even if referential meaning is established by
ostensive definition, such definition is
achieved only by sentences of the kind This is
a . . ., and such meaning, therefore, is
ultimately statable only in terms of the
sentence.
*The sentence is essentially a grammatical
unit; indeed it is the function of syntax to
describe the structure of the sentence+
thereby to define it.
*E. sentences will consist minimally of a
subject NP + a VP as its predicate or
complement.
*Each of these may be a single word as in
Birds fly.
*The syntax will determine much more
complex structures than this, of course.
*However, we do not always produce
complete sentences even of this minimal
kind.
*It is simple enough to envisage a situation in
which someone might simply say Horses.
*This could be in reply to a question such as
What are those animals in that field?
*Although some scholars have talked of
'one word sentences' in describing such exp.
*It seems more helpful to treat Horses as a
sentence fragment and as an incomplete
version of they are horses; certainly we
should need to reconstruct the complete
sentence in this way to talk about its
meaning.
*Most fragments are closely linked to their
linguistic context + handled in terms of
ellipsis (the omission of parts of the
sentences).
*Ellipsis in turn is related to the feature of
*pro-formation' (the use of pronouns+similar
forms that replace v. + other parts of speech).
*All are devices for not repeating
everything that has already been
established in the discourse.
Ex/John saw Mary+spoke to her.
John is omitted,while Mary is replaced
by her in the second half of the
sentence.
*Not all sentence fragments, however,
are linked to the previous discourse.
*Coming? or Coming!
may be used instead of:
Are you coming? or Tm coming!
*Moreover, in actual speech we often fail
simply through lapse of memory or
inattention to produce complete or
grammatical sentences.
*We break off, we forget how we began,
we confuse 2 or more constructions, etc.
*Nevertheless, the interpretation of all of
these depends upon their relation to the
sentences of the grammar.
*We can only recognise sentence
fragments, or incomplete or
ungrammatical sentences, if we know
what a complete grammatical sentence
is.
*In spite of the remarks, it is useful to
think of both words and sentences as
having meaning.
*Moreover, the meaning of a sentence
can be predicted from the meaning of
the words it contains, or, more strictly,
from these words qua lexemes +
the grammatical features with which
they are associated.
(But there has been some debate
whether the meaning is to be related to
the actual SURFACE STRUCTURE or
some more abstract deep structures.
*So each sentence will have a meaning
(a 'literal' meaning), or, if it is ambiguous
like / went to the bank, two or more
meanings.
*However, there are other kinds of
meaning that are not directly related to
grammatical + lexical structure.
*There is more to the problem of
meaning than saying that:
The cat sat on the mat means
'The cat sat on the mat.'
*1st a great deal of meaning in the
spoken l. is carried by the prosodic+
paralinguistic features of l. :
intonation, stress, rhythm, loudness,
etc., as well as such features as facial
exp. + gestures (which are often
called 'paralinguistic' in a wide sense
of the term).
Ex/ by the appropriate use of
intonation, be sarcastic, so
That's very clever means
'That's not very clever'.
*We can also imply what is not said.
Ex/ I don't like coffee with a fall-rise
intonation may well imply
'I like tea'+ She's very clever may
suggest 'She's rather ugly'.
*Or we can indicate that what we are
saying is not really true, but is just
meant to tease, by winking or even
by simply smiling.
*2nd we can by various devices,
including intonation, indicate what is
important, contrastive or new.
*The difference between:
I saw John this mornings
I saw John this morning +
I saw John this morning does not
concern the information itself, but
the relation between that information
+ previous information known to
speaker+hearer.
*The choice of an active or passive
sentence.
*The car hit the child or
The child was hit by the car,
may relate to what it is that we are
talking about + we can draw
attention to items by change of word
order as in:
That one I don't like as opposed to I
don't like that one.
*3RD there is a variety of what are
today called 'speech acts'.
*We warn, we threaten, we promise,
though often without giving any
overt indication that we are doing so.
Ex/There is a bull in the field, which
could be meant as a warning, not
simply as a piece of information.
*4th (and this is a more general point).
*we can 'say' one thing + 'mean' another.
Ex/To say of a professional athlete or a leader
of industry He is a nice man may well be
meant to suggest that he is not really very
good at his profession.
*In general, giving irrelevant information
suggests that more relevant information
would be unfavorable.
*5th there is a problem associated with
sentences like:
Have you stopped beating your wife?
It is impossible to answer Yes or No without
admitting that you have beaten her in the
past.
*For the question implies or presupposes that
you did, though it does not actually say so.
*Similarly, it has been argued that:
The King of France is bald
presupposes that there is a King of France,
though it does not assert his existence‫ز‬
*while:
I regret that she came +
I don't regret that she came
presuppose that she came.
*Finally, l. is often deeply concerned with a
variety of social relations.
*Being rude or polite depends upon the
social relationship with the person to whom
we are speaking.
Ex/we may ask for silence with:
Shut up^ Be quiet.
Would you please be quiet?
Would you keep your voice down a little
please?
*The choice depends on whether we wish to
be rude or not + this relates to the status of
the person addressed.
*Some parts of l. are wholly social +carry no
information (even if we include giving orders,
etc., within information) at all.
Ex/ Good morning , How are you? +
all the Englishman's remarks about the
weather.
*In some societies replies +questions are
often about the family, but no real
information is being sought- the speaker
does not want to know about the health of
the family of the man he is talking to, but is
making social contact.
* Even a great deal of'small talk' at parties.
*It is not intended to transmit
information, but is simply part of the
social activity.
*As W. S. Gilbert said (Patience):
The meaning doesn't matter If it's only
idle chatter Of a transcendental kind.
*Lyons (1977: 643) has suggested that
we should draw a distinction between
sentence meaning+ utterance meaning.
*sentence meaning being directly
predictable from the grammatical+
lexical features of the sentence.
*utterance meaning includes all the
various types of meaning discussed.
*The distinction is useful, but there are 2
reservations:
1. we cannot always clearly decide what
is sentence meaning+what is utterance
meaning.
*In principle it could be argued that the
intonation of a sentence is part of its
grammatical form+
that intonation signals sentence
meaning, not utterance meaning, a
sarcastic intonation having the same
function as a negative.
*Yet in practice the prosodic+
paralinguistic features are so varied + so
variable in what they signal that it is
advisable not to attempt to include
them within the grammatical analysis.
*Equally presuppositional meaning could
be contained in the lexical +grammatical
characteristics of the sentence:
EX/ stop includes in its meaning that the
activity was being carried on previously,
EX/ while any NP like The King of France,
indicates that the item referred to exists.
2. The term 'utterance' is a little
misleading.
Utterances are usually taken to be
unique speech events+
no 2 utterances are the same.
*But the linguist is concerned with
making generalisations about them+
shouldn't be misled by Herachtus'
dictum:
'You can't step into the same river twice.'
*When he generalises, he talks about
sentences.
Ex/If I say 'It's a fine day', although a
single utterance, it is interesting only
as an instance of the sentence:
It is a fine day.
*Indeed an utterance cannot even be
recognized (though it can be stored
on a tape) without being presented
in sentence form.
*What Lyons means by utterance
meaning:
It is the part of the meaning of a
sentence that is not directly related to
the grammatical+ lexical features, but
is obtained either from associated
prosodic+ paralinguistic features or
from the context, linguistic+ non-
linguistic, in which it occurs.
*But he is still generalising. He is not
concerned with a particular utterance
'There is a bull in the field'
which was uttered as a warning at a
particular time by a particular person,
but with
There is a bull in the field, or at
least with the class of utterances that
can be identified in terms of the
sentence There is a bull in the field+
are used as a warning.
*With these reservations the
distinction is a useful one+ PALMER
used the title 'Utterance meaning'.
…………………………………………………………
*For some scholars it is not the
sentence but the proposition that is
the basic unit of semantics, why?
Bcz of the belief that semantics must
be truth-conditional+ that
propositions, unlike sentences, can
always be characterised as true or
false.
*One argument in favour of the
distinction is that a sentence such as:
I was there yesterday.
may be uttered at different times +
different places by different people+
may, for instance, assert that:
Bill Smith was in London on 18
January 1980
or that
Mary Brown was in Bristol on 18
August 1981.
*This sentence cannot, therefore, be said to
be true or false, but the various propositions
that it states (concerning Bill Smith + Mary
Brown) can be.
*Logic, which is truth-conditional, is not
concerned with the grammatical+ lexical
forms of the sentence, but essentially with its
propositional meaning.
Ex/Every boy loves some girl
is grammatically unambiguous, but for the
logician it expresses 2 quite distinct
propositions:
1. every boy loves a different girl
2. or every boy loves the same girl.
*This is important bcz different logical
inferences can be drawn from these distinct
propositions.
*It has also been pointed out that we
distinguish between sentences +propositions
in the distinction between direct+ indirect
speech.
Ex/ John said I'll come on Tuesday'
is true only if 'I'll come on Tuesday' were his
actual words, while
John said he would come on Tuesday is true
if the information is correct.
*John may have said 'I'll be there on Tuesday'
or he may have spoken in French.
The v. say is thus ambiguous: it may refer
either to the actual words that were spoken
(which will be shown in quotation marks) or
to the propositional content of the words
uttered (usually introduced by that).
……………………………………………………………………….
*There are, however, grave difficulties in
restricting semantics to propositions:
1.All the kinds of utterance meaning that we
have discussed will be outside semantics.
More seriously, we shall be restricted to
statements, while questions +commands are
excluded even though, in actual l. questions+
commands are just as important as
statements.
*L. is not simply concerned with providing
information.
*We should have nothing to say, moreover,
concerning modality - the judgments we
make about possible states of affairs:
ex/John may be in his office.
indicates the speaker's attitude towards the
probability of John being in his office.
*Even the argument concerning
I was there yesterday can be turned on
its head+ used against the notion of
proposition, for there are very serious
doubts whether sentences containing
words such as:
I, there + yesterday (deictics) which take
their meaning from the context, can ever
be accurately stated in propositional
terms.
*If that is so, semantics restricted to
propositions will be extraordinarily
limited, for ordinary L. is full of such
deictic terms.
*Finally, when we wish to refer to
propositions we normally do so in terms
of sentences.
*Even if logical formulae are used, they
are no more than translations of
sentences into a logical 'language'.
*This should make us wonder whether
propositions are either necessary or
justified.
*The only real advantage they offer is
that they may avoid some ambiguities,
but that can be done no less easily by
talking about 'sentences with a particular
interpretation', by recognising,+
indicating precisely, those ambiguities
that may be troublesome.
……………………………………………………………..
DONE
‫ من بالمر‬32+31 ‫نقص ص‬
*In recent years some linguists have
attempted to limit semantics, both in
theory+ in practice, to sense relations.
Ex/(Katz& Fodor 1963: 176) in their article
where we read:
'A semantic theory describes+ explains
the interpretive ability of speakers;
By accounting for their performance in
determining the number of readings of a
sentence;
by detecting semantic anomalies;
by deciding upon paraphrase relations
between sentences; +
by marking every other semantic
property or relation that plays a role in
this ability.'
*There is explicit reference only to
ambiguity ('the number of readings'),
anomaly+ paraphrase, but, later work,
Katz1972 lists no less than 15 such
relations.
*The speaker's ability does not, however,
include his ability to relate the sentences
to the world of experience+ indeed Katz
& Fodor explicitly exclude from a
semantic theory any reference to the
settings of sentences.
*It is not always possible to distinguish
clearly between sense and reference,
why?
for the simple reason that the categories
of our l. correspond, to some degree to
real- world distinctions.
*Whether l. determines the shape of the
world or vice versa is probably a
'chicken + egg' problem.
*The fact that we have ram/ewe,bull/ cow
is part of the semantic structure of E, but
it also relates to the fact that there are
male+ female sheep+cattle. *But we have
to remember:
(1) that not all l. will make the same
distinctions
(2) that there is considerable
indeterminacy in the categorisation of the
real world (some things, EX/
the mammals) fall into fairly natural
classes, others do not.
*It is because of this that we can
distinguish sense + reference, yet must
allow that there is no absolute line
between them, between what is in the
world and what is in language.