Semantics

What is semantics?
Approaches to meaning
Sense and reference
Word meaning
Sentence meaning
Ambiguity
Semantic analysis
 What is semantics?
Generally, semantics is a branch of
linguistics, which is concerned with the
study of meaning in language. Semantics
studies the nature of meaning and why
particular linguistic expressions have the
meanings they do.
Philosophers are mainly interested in the
relation between linguistic expressions,
such as the words of a language, and
persons, things, and events in the world to
which these words refer. Within the domain
of linguistics, semantics is mainly
concerned with the analysis of meaning of
words, phrases, or sentences and
sometimes with the meaning of utterances
in discourse or the meaning of a whole text.
Approaches to meaning
The definition of meaning has
long plagued linguists and
philosophers, because “meaning”
covers a variety of aspects of
language and there is no general
agreement about the nature of
meaning. Various different
interpretations have thus far arisen. In
the following discussion, we are going
to cover: (1)the naming view (theory),
(2)conceptualism, (3)the behaviorist
approach, (4)the contextual theory.
Approaches to meaning (1)
According to the naming view, language might
be thought of as a communication system with
on the one hand the signifier, and on the other
the signified. The signifier is a word in the
language and the signified is the object in the
world that it “stands for”, “refers to” or
“denotes”. Words, that is to say, are “names”
or “labels” for things. The naming view is
obviously limited because it seems to apply
only to nouns (or nominal expressions in
general). It is difficult, if not impossible, to
extend the theory of naming to include these
other parts of speech. Even if we restrict this
approach to nouns alone, some nouns, e.g.
unicorn, goblin, fairy, courage, nonsense,
imagination, love, do not refer to objects in the
world at all. .
Approaches to meaning (2)
According to conceptualism, words
and objects are related through the
mediation of concepts of the mind.
Ogden & Richards (1923) were the
first to develop what can be called a
“referential” theory of meaning
illustrated by the classic “semiotic
triangle”, which looks upon the
relation between words and objects as
a triangle:
Approaches to meaning (2)
Thought or reference

Symbol Referent
The SYMBOL refers to the linguistic element (word,
sentence, etc.), the REFERENT refers to the object
in the world of experience, and THOUGHT or
REFERENCE refers to the concept. The relation
between the symbol and the referent is not direct.
Rather, the symbol signifies the referent by way of
the thought or reference, the concept in the mind of
the speaker of a language.
Approaches to meaning (2)
A difficult question arises: what precisely is the link between
symbol and concept? Some people say that it is a
psychological one, that when we think of a name we think of
the concept and vice versa. But what exactly is meant by
“thinking of” a concept?
Some scholars have proposed the image theory of meaning.
That is, language users have some kind of image of a chair
when they talk about chairs. But this is certainly false. A word
may evoke a certain image in our mind, but it is not true that
whenever we utter or hear a word we would visualize a certain
image in our mind. If this were a necessary part of talking, it
would be impossible to communicate ideas between people or
to give a lecture on linguistics. Moreover, to people from
different social-cultural backgrounds, the same word may call
up different images. If so, the same word would be said to
have different meanings and communication between these
different people would be impossible. Worst of all, there are
many words with which it is impossible to associate any image
at all – and, or, because, therefore, etc. Yet they are by no
means meaningless.
Approaches to meaning (2)
It is very difficult to make a clear-cut distinction between
sense and reference. The categories in language correspond,
to some degree at least, to real-world distinctions. The fact
that we have ram/ewe, bull/cow is part of the semantic
structure of English, but it also relates to the fact that there
are male and female sheep and cattle. The understanding of
the semantic anomaly of a sentence like John’s printer has bad
intentions not only depends on the language user’s ability to
interpret the sense relations within the sentence, but also the
ability to relate the sentence to the world of experience.
However, we have to remember (1) that not all languages will
make the same distinctions, (2) that there is considerable
indeterminacy in the categorisation of the real world: some
things (e.g. the mammals) fall into fairly natural classes, while
others do not. It is because of this that we can distinguish
sense and reference, yet must allow that there is no absolute
line between them, between what is in the world and what is
in language.
Approaches to meaning (3)
The behaviouristic or mechanistic
approach of the American structural
linguists represented by Bloomfield
defines meaning by using the
behaviourist notions of “stimulus” and
“response”, and thus the meaning of a
linguistic sign is “the situation in
which the speaker utters it and the
response which it calls forth in the
hearer”.
Approaches to meaning (4)
The contextual theory of meaning
associated with Wittgenstein and Firth
defines meaning of a word as its use
in the language and argues that one
can derive meaning from or reduce
meaning to observable contexts, and
therefore it is useless to study the
meaning of words in isolation of their
context of use.
 Sense and reference
Sense is the relationship inside the
language. By the sense of a word we mean
its place in the system of relationships
with other words in the vocabulary. In
other words, sense relates to the complex
system of relationships that hold between
the linguistic elements themselves (mostly
the words); it is concerned only with intra-
linguistic relations.
Reference is the relationship between
language and the world. It deals with the
relationship between the linguistic
elements, words, sentences, etc., and the
non-linguistic world of experience.
 Sense and reference
For example, when one says, “John is a teacher “, he refers
to a certain individual existent in the situation or known by
both the speaker and hearer. Whether a word has reference
or not, we can ask whether the word has meaning in a
certain context. A word can enter into paradigmatic
relations with other words which can also occur in the same
context. A word can also enter into syntagmatic relations
with other units of the same level in a linear or sequential
structure. For example, in such contexts as a … of milk, the
word pint forms paradigmatic relations with such other
words as bottle, cup, gallon, and syntagmatic relations with
a, of and milk.
We may relate our language to our experience or talk about
sense relations. To illustrate, let’s consider the words ram
and ewe. These on the one hand refer to particular kinds of
animals and derive their meaning in this way. But they also
belong to a pattern in English that includes cow/bull,
sow/boar, mare/stallion, etc. But there are other kinds, e.g.
duck/duckling, pig/piglet (involving adult and young), or
father/son, uncle/nephew (involving family relationships),
and these are not usually thought to be grammatical. They
are rather a part of the “semantic structure” of English.
 Sense and reference
It is very difficult to make a clear-cut distinction
between sense and reference. The categories in
language correspond, to some degree at least, to
real-world distinctions. The fact that we have
ram/ewe, bull/cow is part of the semantic structure
of English, but it also relates to the fact that there
are male and female sheep and cattle. The
understanding of the semantic anomaly of a
sentence like John’s printer has bad intentions not
only depends on the language user’s ability to
interpret the sense relations within the sentence, but
also the ability to relate the sentence to the world of
experience. However, we have to remember (1) that
not all languages will make the same distinctions, (2)
that there is considerable indeterminacy in the
categorisation of the real world: some things (e.g.
the mammals) fall into fairly natural classes, while
others do not. It is because of this that we can
distinguish sense and reference, yet must allow that
there is no absolute line between them, between
what is in the world and what is in language.
 Word meaning
In talking about word meaning, we
are actually dealing with lexical
semantics, which is concerned with
the meanings of words and the
relations between the meanings of
words. Word meaning is made up of
various components which are
interrelated and interdependent.
These components are commonly
described as types of meaning. In this
section we are going to cover:
Grammatical meaning and lexical meaning
Classification of lexical meaning
Sense relations
Semantic field
Grammatical meaning and lexical meaning(1)

Grammatical meaning refers to

that part of the word meaning which
indicates grammatical concepts or
relationships such as word-class,
gender, number, case, tense and all
other grammatical forms known as
inflectional paradigm. A grammatical
or inflectional paradigm is the set of
grammatical forms of a word that
indicates singular and plural meaning
of nouns, or tense meanings of verbs,
and so on.
Grammatical meaning and lexical meaning(2)
Lexical meaning is that part of the
meaning of a word that remains constant
in all forms of one and the same word.
That is to say, for the same word, the
lexical meaning is the same throughout
the paradigm; that is, all the word-forms of
one and the same word have the same
lexical meaning. This is different from the
grammatical meaning of the word, which
varies from one word-form to another. For
example, the word walk has the same
lexical meaning no matter what
grammatical forms it may take.
 Classification of lexical meaning
Acccording to Leech, lecical meaning can
be classified into two broad
categories: conceptual meaning and
associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning is the meaning
given in the dictionary and forms the
core of word meaning.
Associative meaning, including connotative
meaning, social meaning, affective
meaning, reflected meaning, collocative
meaning and thematic meaning, is the
secondary meaning beyond the conceptual
meaning. It is open-ended and
indeterminate as it is liable to the
influences of such factors as culture,
experience, belief, background, education,
etc.
 Conceptual meaning
Conceptual meaning, also called denotation,
cognitive meaning, denotative or
denotational meaning, refers to that part of
meaning of a word or phrase that relates it
to phenomena in the world. Conceptual
meaning is used when the emphasis is on
the relationship between language, on the
one hand, and the things, events, or
processes, which are external to the
speaker and his language, on the other. For
example, the conceptual meaning of the
English word sun is “a heavenly body which
gives off light, heat, and energy”, a
meaning which is understood by anyone
who speaks English. Conceptual meaning is
constant and relatively stable, and as such,
it forms the basis for linguistic
communication simply because the same
word has the same conceptual meaning to
all speakers of the same language.
 Associative meaning (1)
Connotative meaning, traditionally known
as connotation, is the emotional association
which a word or phrase suggests in one’s
mind. It is the supplementary value which is
added to the purely denotative meaning of a
word. For instance, the denotative meaning of
the word mother is “female parent”, but it
generally connotes love, care, and tenderness.
Connotations associated with a certain word
can be different from culture to culture, or
from person to person. For example, the word
dog is associated with different overtones in
Chinese and English. Even in the same culture
or community, the word mother will have
different connotations for different people
because of their individual experiences. For
most people, this word has the connotations of
love, care and tenderness, but for those other
people whose mothers are strict or cruel, this
word may have totally different connotations.
 Associative meaning (2)
Social or stylistic meaning is that which a
word conveys about the social circumstances
of its use. Many words have social or stylistic
features that make them appropriate for
certain contexts, telling us something of the
geographical or social origin of the speaker or
something of the social relationship between
the speaker and the hearer. Because of socio-
stylistic variation, it is not surprising that we
rarely find words which have both the same
conceptual meaning and the same stylistic
meaning. For example, horse, nag, gee-gee
and steed are synonyms, and they have the
same conceptual meaning, but the social
meanings associated with them differ: horse is
a word for general use, while nag is a slang
word, gee-gee is baby language, and steed is
used in poetry. Thus, in language use, we
should choose words properly to fit different
contexts or situations.
 Associative meaning (3)
Affective meaning indicates the speaker’s
feelings or attitudes towards the person or thing in
question. There are a small number of words in
English (chiefly interjections, like Aha! Alas! and
Hurrah!) whose main function is to express emotion.
Some words explicitly convey emotive meanings:
love, hate, boast, gang, niggardly, pleasure, good,
bad, modest, honest, angel. These words, often
called purr words or snarlwords, are often used but
to express the speaker’s approval or disapproval of
the person or thing being talked about.
Affective meaning falls into two categories: the
appreciatory meaning is expressed by the purr
words, i.e. words of positive or favourable overtones,
showing appreciation or attitude of approval; the
derogatory or pejorative meaning is expressed by the
snarlwords, i.e. words of negative or unfavourable
associations, implying disapproval, contempt or
criticism. To have a better understanding, look at the
following pairs of words: famous/notorious,
black/nigger, slender/skinny, determined/pigheaded,
statesman/politician, confidence/ complacency.
 Associative meaning (4)
Reflected meaning is that which is
communicated through association with
another sense of the same expression.
Reflected meaning arises in cases of
multiple conceptual meaning, when one
sense of a word forms part of our response
to another sense. People generally choose
to use euphemistic expressions or avoid
using taboo words to keep away from the
reflected meanings associated with certain
words. Thus taboo words concerned with
sex or parts of the body or religion are
seldom used simply because they usually
conjure up uncomfortable associations. Thus
belly is replaced by abdomen, water-closet
by wash-room, and so on.
 Associative meaning (5)
Collocative meaning consists of the
associations a word acquires on account of the
meanings of words which tend to occur in its
environment. Words have collocative
meanings because they tend to co-occur with
other words in the expression of meaning.
This co-occurrence or mutual expectancy of
words, which is called collocation, is part of
the meaning of a word. For example, pretty
and handsome share common ground in the
meaning “good-looking”, but they have
different collocative meanings, as they are
distinguished by the range of nouns with
which they are likely to collocate: pretty is
usually used with girl, while handsome is
usually used with boy. Further examples are
quasi-synonymous verbs such as wander and
stroll (cows may wander, but may not stroll) or
tremble and quiver (one trembles with fear,
but quivers with excitement).
 Associative meaning (6)
Thematic meaning refers to what is
communicated by the way in which a
speaker or writer organizes the message, in
terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis. For
example, an active sentence such as The
rain destroyed the crops has a different
meaning from its passive equivalent The
crops were destroyed by the rain, although
in conceptual content they seem to be the
same. The difference lies in the
communicative values because the two
sentences suggest different contexts: the
active sentence seems to answer an implicit
question What did the rain do? while the
passive sentence seems to answer an
implicit question What happened to the
crops?
 Sense relations
Sense relation is concerned with
paradigmatic relations of words in language.
Words can be categorized on the
paradigmatic axis into synonyms, antonyms,
hyponyms and meronyms according to the
relationships between their senses, in terms
of the semantic relations of similarity,
contrast, inclusion and part-whole relation.
There are also sense relations in which the
same word may have a number of different
meanings, or words having the same form but
different meanings. These are respectively
called polysemy and homonymy.
 (1) Synonymy (a)
Synonymy is used to mean “sameness of
meaning”. A synonym is a word which
has the same, or nearly the same,
meaning as another word. In the process
of the development of the English
language, its vocabulary has come from
two different sources from Anglo-Saxon on
the one hand and from French, Latin and
Greek on the other. As a result, English is
rich in synonyms, with pairs of, even
triples of words from different origins
expressing the same meaning. For
instance, brotherly and fraternal, buy and
purchase, world and universe, driver and
chaufeur, kingly, royal and regal, and
many others.
 (1) Synonymy (b)
Absolute or complete
synonymsare restricted to highly
specialized vocabulary, such as
scarlet-fever and scarlatina in
medicine. Strictly speaking, no two
words have exactly the same
meaning and most synonyms in the
English language are actually relative
synonyms or near-synonyms. There
are a number of ways in which
synonyms can be seen to differ.
 (1) Synonymy (c)
First, synonyms may embrace
different shades of meaning, and thus
vary in the range and intensity of
meaning. For example, want, wish,
desire are synonymous, but differ in
terms of range and intensity. Of the
three words, want is the most general
and has the widest range of meaning
while wish and desire are narrower in
sense but are stronger in intensity,
and desire is the strongest of all.
 (1) Synonymy (d)
Synonyms may belong to different
dialects of the language. People,
depending on where they live, will
select different regional varieties in
talking about the same thing. The
most obvious example is the
difference between American English
and British English. American people
use fall while British people use
autumn. Can you imagine that 爸爸、叔
叔 and 大爷 in a dialect of Shandong
Province are synonyms?
 (1) Synonymy (e)
Some synonyms have the same
cognitive meaning but express
different degrees of formality. That
is, they have different stylistic
meanings. For instance, gentleman,
man, chap have the same cognitive
meaning, but gentleman is formal,
man is general, while chap is
colloquial.
 (1) Synonymy (f)
Synonyms may have the same
cognitive meaning but different
emotive or evaluative meanings. A
ready example is bravery and
foolhardiness, of which bravery
implies approval, while foolhardiness
implies disapproval.
 (1) Synonymy (g)
Synonymous words may collocate
with different other words in their
actual usage. That is, some synonyms
occur in different environments or
have different distributions. For
example, rancid collocates with bacon
or butter, addled with eggs or brains,
sour with milk. For “groups” of
animals, we have synonyms occurring
with different types of animals, such
as a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, a
shoal of fish, and a swarm of bees.
 (2) Antonymy
Antonymy is used for “oppositeness
of meaning”. Words having opposite
meanings are antonyms. Antonyms
can be classified into three types on
the basis of semantic opposition.
Antonymy fall into the following
categories: (1) Contraries; (2)
Complementaries; (3)
Conversives.
 (2) Antonymy (a)
Contraries (or contrary terms) show a type of
oppositeness of meaning, illustrated by such pairs as
wide/narrow, old/young, big/small, etc. They can be seen in
terms of degrees of the quality involved. Thus a road may
be wide or very wide and may be wider than another. This
shows that the semantic polarity in contraries is relative and
the opposition is gradual. Contraries are also known as
graded antonyms. This means that contraries can be placed
at both extremes of a scale, between which there may be
gradable lexical items. For example, between the antonymic
pair beautiful ─ ugly, there may be such gradable adjectives
as pretty ─ good-looking ─ plain. One may also grade the
intensity of feeling as in love ─ attachment ─ liking ─
indifference ─ antipathy ─ hate. It can be seen from above
that contraries always imply comparison with some norm.
There is one thing that is particularly interesting about
contraries: one member of a pair, usually the member for
the positive degree, is more basic and frequent, and is thus
unmarked. Generally, we ask the age of a person, however
young or old he is, by saying How old are you? instead of
How young are you? The latter question will not be used
unless we deliberately emphasize the point that the
addressee is surprisingly young.
 (2) Antonymy (b)
Compementaries, also called
contradictory terms,
complementaries (or
complementary terms) represent a
type of binary semantic contrast which
admits of no gradability between the
items, e.g. male ─female, boy ─ girl,
single ─ married, etc. Male is said to be
“the complementary of” female, and
vice versa. In such a relationship, the
assertion of one of the items implies
the denial of the other.
 (2) Antonymy (c)
Conversives, also called relative terms or
converse terms, display a type of oppositeness
of meaning, illustrated by such as buy — sell, give
— receive, parent — child, debtor — creditor,
above — below, etc. Buy is said to be “the
converse of” sell and vice versa: If A sells a watch
to B, B buys a watch from A. The same applies to
the pair above ─ below: If A is above B, B is below
A. In such a relationship, found especially in the
definition of reciprocal social roles, spatial
relationship and so on, there is an
interdependence of meaning, such that one
member of the pair presupposes the other
member. In this respect, “converseness” contrasts
with complementarity, where there is no such
symmetry of dependence.
 (3) Hyponymy (1)
Hyponymy is a relationship between
two words, in which the meaning of
one of the words includes the meaning
of the other word. For example, the
words animal and dog are related in
such a way that dog refers to a kind of
animal, and animal is a general term.
(Note that the class membership is
opposite to meaning inclusion: the
class of animals includes the class of
dogs.) The specific term, dog, is called
a hyponym, and the general term,
animal, is called a superordinate.
 (3) Hyponymy (2)
A superordinate term can have many
hyponyms. Hyponyms having the
same sperordinate are called co-
hyponyms. For example:
Vehicle move

Bus car lorry van walk run swim

fly
 (3) Hyponymy (3)
All hyponymy is transitive in the sense that there is a
hierarchical relation between different terms. If a relation
holds between the superordinate X and the hyponym Y, and
Y in turn is the superordinate of Z, then X is also the
superordinate of Z. For example:

Livestock

Ox sheep pig

Ram ewe lamb

 (4) Meronymy
Meronymy is a relation in semantics that
expresses the part-whole relation that lexical
items may have. In this relation, the part is called
the meronym, and the whole is called the
holonym. For example, limb is a meronym of tree
because a limb is part of a tree. The same entity
may be made up of different components, which
means that a holonym can have many meronyms.
Words denoting parts of the same entity are co-
meronyms, as in the case of tree, limb, root,
where limb and root are co-meronyms. Similarly
palm and finger are co-meronyms of hand.
Meronymy is different from hyponymy in that the
relation of meronymy captures the idea of “is part
of”, while the relation of hyponymy captures the
idea of “is a kind of”. For instance, a ram is a kind
of sheep, but a finger is part of the hand.
 (5) Polysemy
Polysemy refers to the phenomenon that the same word may have
a set of different meanings. For instance, mouth as “organ of body”,
“entrance of cave”, etc.
The meanings of a polysemic word are usually related in one way or
another. There is usually a primary meaning, and all other meanings
are derived from it. For example, face originally means “the front of
the head”, and later it has the meanings of “the expression of the
countenance”, “a surface of a thing”, “the appearance”, “dignity”,
etc.
In some cases, a word originally having an abstract meaning may be
used to express a concrete meaning, and vice versa. This can be
illustrated by credit and ear in “The student is a credit to the
university” and “She has an ear for music”.
In other cases, in the meanings of a polysemic word, one meaning
may be more general or specific than other meanings. The word
case, for example, is used not only to generally mean “instance” or
“example”, but also specifically “an instance of disease” or “a legal
suit”.
Furthermore, the meanings of a polysemic word may be related in
such a way that a figurative meaning is derived from its literal
meaning through transference of meaning. For example, blanket
literally means “a kind of bed covering”, but we can use it
figuratively in a blanket of snow. Similar examples include a cool
reception, the bed of a river, the cock of a gun, a saddle in the
mountains.
 (6) Homonymy
Lexical items which have the same
phonological and/or spelling form, but
differ in meaning are called
homonyms. Such a linguistic
phenomenon, i.e. identity of form and
diversity of meaning is referred to as
homonymy. There are three types of
homonyms in English.
 (6) Homonymy (1)
Homographs Words that have the
same spelling, but differ in sound and
meaning are called homographs,
e.g. bow /baJ/ v. (bend the head or
body in respect) ─ bow /bǝJ/ n. (a
device for shooting arrows); lead /li:d/
v. (guide or direct) ─ lead /led/ n. (a
heavy, soft, malleable, bluish-gray
chemical element); wind /waInd/ v.
(turn or make revolve) ─ wind /wInd/
n. (air in motion). .
 (6) Homonymy (2)
Homophones Words that have the
same phonological form, but differ in
spelling and meaning are called
homophones, e.g. air ─ heir, sea ─
see, ore ─ oar, cent ─ scent.
 (6) Homonymy (3)
Full homonyms Words that are
identical in sound and spelling but
different in meaning are called full
(or perfect) homonyms, e.g. ball (a
round object used in games) ─ ball (a
gathering of people for dancing);
match (a short thin stick, usually of
wood, with a head covered by
chemicals) ─ match (a game or sports
event).
 Semantic field
Semantic field is concerned with paradigmatic relations. In any
language, words sharing the same concept can be classified into
meaning areas or semantically related sets. The semantic field is the
organization of words as a system of interrelated lexical networks,
and words of a semantic field are joined together by a common
concept. For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, brother,
sister, uncle, aunt belong to a semantic field whose relevant features
include generation, sex, membership of the father’s or mother’s side
of the family. Another often quoted example is the color terms which
belong to the same semantic field of colors in English: green, blue,
black, gray, orange, rose, olive, purple, lemon, emerald, sandy, coral,
and so on.
In a semantic field, words are incompatible. Thus “It was on Saturday
that she went there” implies that she did not go there on Monday or
any other day of the week, while “Bill punched Mary” implies that
he did not kick her or slap her: punch, kick and slap all belong to the
same semantic field.
There are some cultural differences in this respect. For example, in
English, the items dividing up the kinship field include: father,
mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt,
cousin, nephew, niece, etc., while the Chinese kinship field is made
up of 父亲，母亲，祖父，祖母，兄，弟，姐姐，妹妹，叔父，伯父，舅父，姨父，姑父，伯母，婶娘，姨母，舅母，堂（表）
兄弟，堂（表）姐妹，侄子，外甥，侄女，甥女， etc. Thus, in English, uncle is an inclusive
term which is correspondent to the terms 叔，伯，舅父，姨父，姑父 in the
Chinese language.
 Sentence meaning
A wrong definition of sentence
meaning: the meaning of a
sentence is the sum total of the
meanings of the individual words,
and that if we know the meaning
of each word we will naturally
understand the meaning of the
sentence. If the above definition is
correct, then how can you
understand the following
sentences: John kissed Mary and
Mary kissed John? Are they the
same? Of course not!! Why?
 Sentence meaning
First, in grammatical terms, John is subject in the
first sentence but object in the second sentence,
and Mary is object in the first sentence but
subject in the second sentence. Secondly, the
grammatical elements play different semantic
roles in the two sentences. In the first sentence,
John is the actor performing an action on the goal
Mary, but in the second sentence, the roles are
reversed, with Mary as the actor performing an
action on the goal John. So a correct definition of
sentence meaning should be:
According to Saeed (1997), the meaning of a
sentence is determined by the meaning of its
component parts and the way in which they are
combined. Thus, any grammatical form imposed
in the generation of a sentence makes a
contribution to the meaning of the sentence.
Semantic relations at sentential level (1)

There are five major types

of sense relations between
sentences: entailment,
presupposition, synonymy,
inconsistency and
implicature.
Semantic relations at sentential level (2)

Entailment means that the meaning

of one sentence is contained in that
of another. For example:
(a) Helen has three nice children.
(b) Helen has children.
In the semantic relation of
entailment, one sentence follows
logically from another: when (a) is
true, (b) is necessarily true; when (b)
is false, (a) is false; when (a) is false,
(b) may be true or false; when (b) is
true, (a) may be true or false.
Semantic relations at sentential level (3)
Presupposition refers to the conditions that
must be met in order for the intended meaning of
a sentence to be regarded as acceptable. For
example:
(a) Martha regrets drinking John’s home brew.
(b) Martha drank John’s home brew.
If sentence (b) is not true, that is, Martha didn’t
drink John’s home brew, sentence (a) would not
be acceptable in the real world. Presupposition is
similar to entailment in that when (a) is true, (b)
is true in both cases. However, there is an
important difference between them, that is, in
presupposition, when (a) is false, (b) is still true.
In other words, both (a) and its negation
presuppose (b). Furthermore, when (b) is true, (a)
can either be true or false; when (b) is false, no
truth value can be said about (a), i.e. (a) is
neither true nor false.
Semantic relations at sentential level (4)
Sentences may be synonymous or form
paraphrases. A paraphrase is an
alternative version of a sentence that does
not change its meaning. Synonymous
sentences or paraphrases have the same
truth value. For example,
(a) I am an orphan.
(b) I am a child and have no father or
mother.
Sentences (a) and (b) mean approximately
the same thing, differing only in emphasis.
The semantic relation of synonymy or
paraphrase may be expressed as the
following: if (a) is true, (b) is true; also if
(a) is false, (b) is false; and vice versa.
Semantic relations at sentential level (5)

Inconsistency or contradiction means

that if one sentence is true, the other must
be false. That is, if (a) is true, (b) is false;
also if (b) is true, (a) is false. The two
sentences below are inconsistent or
contradictory in terms of their sense
relation.
(a) Wilkins does not wish to sell his farm.
(b) Wilkins hopes to sell his farm.
It can be said that if two sentences are
inconsistent or contradictory, one sentence
does not follow logically from the other.
Semantic relations at sentential level (6)
Implicature is largely a relation of
pragmatic implication, worked out
through the inference of the addressee
in a certain context. For example, in the
following pair of sentences, sentence
(a) implicates (b).
(a) John’s brother bought three horses.
(b) John’s brother is very rich.
As a semantic relation, implicature can
be defined as the implied meaning
inferred from a sentence in terms of the
speaker’s and the hearer’s assumptions
and beliefs.
 Ambiguity (1)
Ambiguity involves expressions with more than one
normal interpretation. Lexical ambiguity is usually
caused by polysemy or homonymy. Sentences may be
lexically ambiguous because they contain one or more
ambiguous words. For example, The girl found a book
on Main Street can be interpreted in three ways:
(a) The girl found a book which was lying on Main
Street.
(b) The girl found a book while she was on Main Street.
(c) The girl found a book whose subject matter
concerned Main Street.
A phrase or sentence may also be grammatically
ambiguous if more than one structural analysis can be
assigned to it. For example, old men and women could
be analysed either as old [men and women] (i.e. both
are old) or [old men] and women (i.e. only men are
old).
 Ambiguity (2)
There are some ambiguous sentences whose
grammatical ambiguities are revealed only by
their underlying structures. This can also be
illustrated by Chomsky’s famous example
Flying planes can be dangerous, which can be
paraphrased as “Planes which are flying can
be dangerous” or “To fly planes can be
dangerous”. More examples of this kind are
as follows:
It is a universally recognized and
demonstrable fact that many of the
acceptable utterances of English and other
languages are ambiguous. Frequently, though
not always, their ambiguity passes unnoticed
in everyday language behaviour, because the
context can exclude those irrelevant or
improbable interpretations.
 Semantic analysis (1)
Componential analysis is an approach to the
study of meaning which analyses a word into a
set of meaning components or semantic features.
Semantic features constitute the linguistic
meaning of a word. They are a set of abstracted
characteristics that distinguish the category that
the word names from all other categories.
Semantic features are established on the basis of
binary opposition. For example, we can factor out
Male/Female as the binary opposition that holds
between the noun pairs:
man woman
boy girl
rooster hen
bull cow
To capture this generalization, a binary feature
[±Male] can be established.
 Semantic analysis (2)
We can thus set up three binary semantic
features: [±Male], [±Adult], [±Human] to
distinguish the word on the previous slide. The
“meaning” of a word can then be specified by
indicating a “plus” or “minus” for the presence or
absence of all the semantic properties that define
the word. Using these features we can
characterize man, woman, boy, girl, bullock and
cow semantically as:
man [+Male, +Adult, +Human]
woman [–Male, +Adult, +Human]
boy [+Male, –Adult, +Human]
girl [–Male, –Adult, + Human]
bullock [+Male, –Adult, –Human]
cow [–Male, +Adult, –Human]
 Semantic analysis (3)
Componential analysis can be used to
explain such sense relations as hyponymy,
synonymy, entailment, inconsistency,
tautology, presupposition, and semantic
anomaly. For example, from the point of
view of componential analysis, hyponymy
refers to the relationship which exists
between two meanings if one
componential formula contains all the
features present in the other formula.
Woman is hyponymous to grown-up,
because the two features making up the
definition grown-up [+Human, +Adult] are
both present in the definition woman:
[+Human, +Adult, –Male].
 Semantic analysis (4)
Componential analysis has been
used to bring out the logical relations
that are associated with sentences
or words. Thus by marking man as
[+Male] and pregnant as [–Male], we
can rule out contradictions such as
pregnant man. Similarly by marking
boy as [+Male, –Adult, +Human] and
child as [–Adult, +Human], we can
establish that There were two boys
entails There were two children.
 Predication analysis (1)
Proposition and predication
Distinction between sentence and proposition: A sentence is a
grammatical unit, while proposition is a semantic unit. Lyons (1977)
defines proposition as what is expressed by a declarative sentence.
More specifically, a proposition is the unit of meaning that identifies
the subject matter of a statement; it describes some state of
affairs, and takes the form of a declarative sentence. A very
important property of the proposition is that it has a truth value. It
is either true or false. Sentences having the same underlying
proposition have the same truth value, because they share a
description of the same state of affairs. For example:
(a) Caesar invaded Gaul.
(b) Gaul was invaded by Caesar.
(c) It was Gaul that Caesar invaded.
(d) It was Caesar that invaded Gaul.
(e) What Caesar invaded was Gaul.
(f) The one who invaded Gaul was Caesar.
All these sentences have the same proposition that can be
expressed as invade (Caesar, Gaul)
However, if we restrict sentence meaning to propositions, non-
statements such as questions and commands will be excluded in
the study of sentence meaning. In actual language, questions and
commands are just as important as statements.
 Predication analysis (2)
Definition of predication: Leech (1981)
regards predication as the major unit in
the semantic analysis of sentence meaning.
Predication is the common category shared
by propositions, questions, commands, etc.
The predication “Girl ride horse” can be
exemplified as the following:
(a) The girl rode a horse
(b) The girl didn’t ride a horse
(c) Did the girl ride a horse?
(d) The girl’s riding of a horse
(e) For the girl to ride a horse
 Predication analysis (3)
Predicate and Argument: Predication analysis is
an important approach to the analysis of
sentential meaning. This kind of analysis consists
in breaking down predications into their
constituents: argument (a logical participant)
and predicate (a relational element linking the
arguments). The predicate is the major or pivotal
element and governs the arguments.
According to the number of arguments governed
by the predicates, we may distinguish three
general types of predicates: a two-place
predicate which governs two arguments, a one-
place predicate which governs one argument,
and a no-place predicate which has no
argument at all. For instance, make and hit can
be regarded as two-place predicates, walk and
tremble, one-place predicates, and rain in It is
raining a no-place predicate, because it here has
no meaning independent of the predicate and
only fulfils the syntactic requirement.
 Predication analysis (4)
Why predication analysis? It is able to explain a
number of sense relations existing between
sentences, especially those commonly viewed as
semantic deviations.
First of all, it can explain entailment. From the
perspective of predication analysis, entailment
can be defined as follows: A relation of entailment
exists between two propositions which differ only
in that an argument of one is hyponymous to an
argument of the other. Thus, She saw a boy
entails She saw a child, because the argument
boy is hyponymous to the argument child.
Similarly, the hyponymy relation also exist
between predicates, as is shown by the relation
between steal and take (“stealing” is a kind of
“taking”). As a result, John stole a horse entails
John took a horse.
To sum up, the entailment holds by virtue of the
semantic inclusion of one predication in the other.
 Predication analysis (5)
Secondly, it can explain
inconsistency. Inconsistency can also
be defined as the relation between
two propositions whenever the
predicate of one is incompatible with
that of the other. For example, Mary
dislikes work is inconsistent with
Mary likes work, because the
predicate dislike is incompatible with
the predicate like.
 Predication analysis (6)
Fourthly, it can explain tautology. Tautology refers to the
unnecessary repetition of a word or idea. A statement is said
to be tautological if the speaker unnecessarily says the
same thing twice. For example, sentences like Boys are boys
and He sat alone by himself are tautological because they
all involve unnecessary repetition of meaning. Tautologies
are uninformative, and should be avoided in linguistic
communication. However, some tautologies can be used for
specific purposes. For example, Boys are boys may convey
the implicature like “Boys are naughty and mischievous by
nature”.
From the perspective of predication analysis, tautology
arises when information contained in an argument of a
predication includes the information contained in the rest of
the predication. In a one-place predication, it means the
argument is hyponymous to the predicate, as in The woman
you love is female. In a two-place predication, a tautology
arises whenever a qualifying predication within one of its
arguments semantically includes the rest of the main
predication. For example, A butcher sells meat is a
tautology, because its argument a butcher contains the
qualifying predication a man who sells meat.
 Predication analysis (7)
Finally, it can explain semantic
anomoly. Semantic anomaly arises
when one of the arguments or the
predicate of the main predication is
self-contradictory, i.e. containing two
contrasting features such as
[+Human] and [–Human], or contains
two downgraded predications which
semantically exclude one another, as
exemplified by Human horses feed on
oat and This programme is for the
music-lover who dislikes music.