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Semantic

The document discusses semantics, which is the study of meaning in human language. It defines speaker meaning as what a speaker intends to convey through their use of language, while sentence meaning refers to the literal definition of words and phrases. The key aspects of semantics include distinguishing between these levels of meaning, understanding how context influences interpretation, and explaining how language allows for an infinite number of meaningful expressions through the principle of compositionality. Semanticists aim to analyze and explain the nature of meaning at different levels of abstraction, including propositions, sentences, and utterances.

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Romero Flavia
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55 views

Semantic

The document discusses semantics, which is the study of meaning in human language. It defines speaker meaning as what a speaker intends to convey through their use of language, while sentence meaning refers to the literal definition of words and phrases. The key aspects of semantics include distinguishing between these levels of meaning, understanding how context influences interpretation, and explaining how language allows for an infinite number of meaningful expressions through the principle of compositionality. Semanticists aim to analyze and explain the nature of meaning at different levels of abstraction, including propositions, sentences, and utterances.

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Romero Flavia
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Flavia - introduction: We are going to talk about semantics, but what is semantics?

SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in human LANGUAGE.

Semantic is the study of meaning in human language. The study of words, phrases
and sentences. The meanings of words and phrases in a particular context. It is what
a speaker conventionally means.

The first step in working out a theory of what meaning is, is to recognize the
distinction between speaker meaning and sentence meaning clearly and always to
keep in mind whether we are talking about what speakers mean or what words (or
sentences) mean.

SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means when he uses a piece of language.

● I'm not out of the woods yet. (meaning i´m still dealing with a problem).
● don't beat around the bush. (meaning avoid talking about something difficult or
unpleasant.)
● I'd bet my life on it. (meaning I’m very certain of something.)

Speaker meaning in semantics refers to the meaning that is intended by the speaker
when he uses a piece of language. Semantics is intricate and sometimes convoluted
because words and combinations of words can mean different things to different
people. What a person intends to express may not be what the listener or listeners
hear. Meaning (or semantics) depends much on the situation, who is speaking and
who is listening.

Ani- Sentence meaning or word meaning is what a sentence or word means. What it
counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned. The distinction is useful in
analysing the various kinds of communication between people made possible by
language. Sentence is defined as a statement or question made with a group of words
including a subject, verb and object. An example of a sentence is a group of words in
a book that begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark.
- Lexical semantics (words and meaning relationship among words)
- Phrasal/ sentential semantics ( syntactic units larger than a word)
An example could be the following one: When one first reads the word “crash”, for
example, a car accident may leap to mind. But, the term can also be used to discuss
the sound that is created when a pair of large symbols are brought together in a piece
of music, or how waves break against a rocky coast. The aim of semanticists is to
explain the nature of meaning.

Flviavia: The science that studys semantics is called LINGUISTIC.

Inside Linguistics we have the LANGUAGE COMPONENT → when we say something like
“Tom ate the orange” we have a sentence made of words that form a phase/clause and sounds
(phonetics, phonology), with a specific grammatical structure (syntax) and a
particular meaning (semantics, pragmatics).

THESE ARE ALL THE PARTS THAT YOU NEED TO MAKE A LANGUAGE WORK.
when we talk about Grammar, we can talk about ↗ prescriptive grammar
↘ descriptive grammar

prescriptive grammar: It is the traditional approach of grammar that tells people how
to use the English language, what forms they should utilize, and what functions they
should serve.
Prescriptive grammar is essential as it helps people use formal English speech and
writing. Prescriptive rules are the ones that tell you how you should speak → don't
leave a preposition at the end of a sentence, don't say "no problem" when you mean
"thank you". These are rules you have to be taught, that you know consciously, and
that you can break if you want. They're just social conventions, and there's nothing
fundamental or basic about them.

Descriptive grammar: This is how native English speakers actually talk and write, and
it has no concrete idea of the way it should be structured.
Descriptive rules, on the other hand, show how people actually behave and use their
language. These are the ones that actually guide your interpretations, tell you
what sound combinations are okay for your language and which ones aren't, and
how to build complex sentences you've never said or heard before. You might not
be aware of what these rules are, or be able to explain them, but you apply them to
speech all of the time subconsciously. These principles of language are what
makes our language work; they're what lies within our real grammar, and they're
what linguists study when we do our research.

● productivity → To produce new meaning by the principle of compositionality.


● The principle of compositionality → words + grammar rules. (The semantic meaning
of any unit of language is determined by the semantic meanings of its parts along
with the way they are put together) S+V+DO/OC

Grammar (morphology and syntax) generates new words, phrases and sentences.
This gives us a potentially infinite number of words, phrases and sentences that can
have meaning In order to explain how an infinite number of pieces of language can be
meaningful, and how we, as language users, can figure out the meanings of new
ones, semanticists apply the Principle of Compositionality.

● problems facing the principle of compositionality


→ Sentences meaning VS speaker meaning (my car broke down- isn't it fantastic)
→ contextualized meaning
→ knowledge of the world
→ individual differences
→problem of circularity

Ani - Level of abstraction (levels of semantics analysis)


● Proposition: A proposition is the semantic kernel of a sentence that
determines its truth conditions, independent of its syntactic form and lexical
realization. ... In formal semantics, a proposition is formed by the linguistic
expression for a predicate together with the expressions for the arguments.
The meanings of the whole sentences involve propositions. A proposition is
that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs. The state of affairs involves persons or things
referred to by expressions in the sentence and the situation or action they are
involved in. The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences
express different propositions (if a sentence is true and the other one is false,
they express different propositions)
Example:
The common content of each of the the following utterances is a proposition:
Lucía ate the banana.
The banana was eaten by Lucía.
Did Lucía eat the banana?
Lucía eats the banana.

- True propositions correspond to facts, false propositions do not


correspond to facts.
- A speaker indicates which things in the world are being talked about.
For example: My sister (identifies person) is in the kitchen (identifies
thing)

● Sentences: It is a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a


language and express a complete thought. Can be true or false. A “sentence”
is a group of words that express a specific thought: to capture it, we need to
understand how words relate to other words. For example: Richard is accused
of the kidnapping of Susan.

● Utterances: In spoken language analysis, an utterance is the smallest unit of


speech. It is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear
pause. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded
by silence. Utterances do not exist in written language, however- only their
representations do. Utterances are non abstract physical events (ephemeral
events). An utterance was in a particular accent (a particular way of
pronouncing words). Utterances of non sentences (short phrases or single
words) are used by people in communication all the time. Semantics is
concerned with the meanings of non-sentences. For example: Ouch! or `I like
to play football` `I like to play football` ` I like to play football` (one sentence,
three utterances). Utterances have quotation marks (``)

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