Semiotics study of signs and sign systems

Semantics the science of meaning in language; words – would be examples of verbal symbols.

Semantics- the study of the meanings of linguistic expressions, either simple or complex, taken in isolation.

It further accounts for the way utterance meaning, i.e. the meaning of an expression used in a concrete

context of utterance, is related to expression meaning.

Relationship between a signifier (a sign) and its signified (the object it represents):

Icon a similarity between a sign and what it represents (e.g., a portrait and its real-life subject);

Index the sign is in a causal relation with its signified (e.g., smoke is an index of fire)

Symbol there is only a conventional link between the sign and its signified (e.g. mourning symbolized by

wearing black or white clothes)

Different levels of linguistic analysis:

Phonology is the study of what sounds a language has and how these sounds combine to form words.

Syntax is the study of how words can be combined into sentences.

Semantics is the study of the meanings of words and sentences.

Meaning is the central notion of linguistic semantics.

As a branch of linguistics, semantics includes word meaning (in some cases morpheme meaning),

sentence meaning, even text and discourse meaning.

Reference the technical term for using an expression for something. When people use I, they refer to

themselves. Referent the entity referred to by an expression.

Expression meaning the meanings of words, phrases and sentences, taken as such, i.e. out of any

particular context, in their general sense, constitute the level of meaning. Expression- just a general term for

words, phrases and sentences. The term expression meaning covers, in particular, word meaning and

sentence meaning. The level of expression meaning constitutes the central subject of linguistic semantics.

It studies the material, or equipment, as it were, that languages provide for communication.

Utterance meaning comes about when a sentence with its meaning is actually used in a concrete context.

First of all, utterance meaning involves reference. In addition to reference, another central notion comes

into play, the notion of truth.

The context of utterance (CoU) the sum of circumstances that bear on reference and truth. The most

important aspects are: the speaker (or producer) of the utterance; the addressee(s) (or recipients) of the

utterance; the time at which the utterance is produced and/or received; the place where the utterance is

produced and/or received; the facts given when the utterance is produced and/or received.

Communicative meaning the speech act level. Unlike expression meaning and utterance meaning,

communicative meaning lies outside the range of semantics. It is of central concern for pragmatics.

Expression meaning the meaning of a simple or complex expression taken in isolation.

Utterance meaning the meaning of an expression when used in a given context of utterance; fixed

reference and truth value (for declarative sentences).

Communicative meaning the meaning of an utterance as a communicative act in a given social setting.

The meanings of words and sentences differ in one important point. Meanings of words must simply be

known and therefore learned. Lexical meanings- meanings stored in our minds. We do not, however, have

ready-made, learned meanings of complete sentences stored in our minds.

Composition- although we usually understand sentences without conscious effort, their meanings must be

derived from our stored linguistic knowledge. Complex expressions whose meanings are not stored in the

lexicon are therefore said to have compositional meaning. The words occur here in particular grammatical

forms. The forms of the words matter directly for their meaning, and consequently for the meaning of the

whole sentence. There are rules for deriving the plural meaning of a noun, the comparative meaning of an

adjective or the simple past tense meaning of a verb, respectively. These rules are part of the apparatus we

use in composition.

The syntactic rules of a language allow the formation of complex expressions from what will be called basic

expressions. (Basic expressions- expressions with a lexical meaning.) The meaning of complex

expressions is determined by semantic mechanism. This mechanism draws on three sources: the lexical

meanings of the basic expressions; the grammatical forms of the basic expressions; the syntactic structure

of the complex expression.

Semantic composition is thought of a so-called bottom-up process. It proceeds from the smallest units to

the larger ones.

The principle of compositionality: the meaning(u) of a complex expression is determined by the lexical

meanings of its components, their grammatical meanings and the syntactic structure of the whole.

Lexical semantics: the investigation of expression meanings stored in the mental lexicon (mouse, sock);

Compositional word semantics: the investigation of the meaning of words that are formed by the rules of

word formation (mousify, mouse food);

Semantics of grammatical forms: the investigation of the meaning contribution of grammatical forms that

can be freely chosen, often understood as including the semantic analysis of function words such as

articles, prepositions and conjunctions;

Sentence semantics: the investigation of the rules that determine how the meanings of the components of a

complex expression interact and combine.

Utterance semantics: the investigation of the mechanisms (e.g., meaning shifts) that determine, on the

basis of the compositionally derived expression meaning, the range of possible utterance meanings.

SEMANTICS the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.

SPEAKER MEANING what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language.

SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as

the equivalent of in the language concerned.

Meanings are concepts.

Concept an idea or a principle that is connected with something abstract

The meaning of a sentence a concept that provides a mental description of a certain kind of situation.

Descriptive meaning/ propositional meaning the part of meaning related to truth and reference.

It makes sense to talk of the potential referents of content words („referent of the noun‟, „referent of the

verb‟). Adjectives never have a referent of their own, but they always describe the referent of some NP.

The descriptive meaning of a content word a concept of its potential referents

The situation referred to can be defined as the set of the referents of all referring elements of the sentence

and how they are linked. The notion of the situation referred to only makes sense if the sentence is true.

The situations potentially referred to are all those situations that fit the mental description provided by the

meaning of the sentence, i.e. all the situations for which the sentence is true.

The descriptive meaning of a sentence, its proposition, is a concept that provides a mental description of

the kind of situations it potentially refers to.

Denotation the category determined by the meaning of a content word. The denotation of a content word

is the category, or set, of all its potential referents. The denotation of a word is more than the set of all

existing entities of that kind. It includes real referents as well as fictitious ones, usual exemplars and

unusual ones, maybe even exemplars we cannot imagine because they are yet to be invented

The truth conditions of a sentence a the conditions under which it is true. The descriptive meaning of the

sentence is its proposition, and the proposition determines the truth conditions of the sentence.

The grammatical type of the sentence also contributes to its meaning, and this contribution is non-

descriptive.

(1) The dog has ruined my blue skirt. (3) Has the dog ruined my blue skirt?

The question describes exactly the same sort of situation. Hence it is considered to have the same

proposition. Yet the total meaning is different: (3) renders a question while (1) renders an assertion.

The semantic contribution of the grammatical sentence type is not part of the proposition.

The meaning contribution of grammatical sentence type is a first example of non-descriptive meaning.

The term social meaning is not to be confused with the communicative meaning of a verbal act. Most

expressions and grammatical forms do not have social meaning, but some do.

(4) a. Ihre Fahrkarte, bitte! – Danke.

c. ‚Your ticket, please! – Thank you.‟

An expression or grammatical form has social meaning if and only if its use is governed by the social rules

of conduct or, more generally, rules for handling social interactions.

All languages have phrases with a clear-cut social meaning: phrases of greeting (Hi) or saying good-bye,

phrases of apologizing (sorry), acknowledging (thank you) or answering the phone.

For each such phrase in each language there is a social rule that defines the circumstances under which it

is properly used and what it means.

Expressive meaning - part of the lexical meaning of certain expressions, a semantic quality of words and

phrases independent of the CoU and of the way they are being spoken. Since all expressives serve to

express personal feelings, attitudes or sensations, which are perceptible only to the holder, their correct use

is just a matter of personal judgement.

descriptive meaning description of referents and situations agreement with facts

social meaning indication of social relations and performance of social acts social rules of conduct

expressive meaning immediate expression of personal sensations, feelings,

attitudes or evaluations

subjective choice

Connotations considered to be something like a secondary meaning in addition to the primary lexical

meaning, e.g., „dirty‟ for pigs.

Euphemisms good or indirect terms for bad or tabooed things, e.g., pass away for die.

Politically correct language, e.g., disabled being replaced by handicapped being replaced by challenged.

A sentence neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is a string of words put together by the

grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought as the ideal string of words behind various

realizations in utterances and inscriptions. It expresses a complete thought. A sentence has „a subject‟

(=the topic) and „a predicate‟ (=what is being said about the topic). A combination of words that conform to

the grammatical rules of a language BUT grammatical rules differ from one language to another.

SENTENCE: Notional definition expresses a complete thought;

Logical definition a sentence has „a subject‟ (=the topic) and „a predicate‟ (=what is being

said about the topic);

Formal definition a string of words;

Grammatical definition a combination of words that conform to the grammatical rules of a

language, BUT grammatical rules differ from one language to another.

An utterance any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that

person. It is the use by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as a

sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word. Utterances physical events, they die

on the wind.

Utterance meaning the totality of what the speaker intends to convey by making an utterance. Utterances

of non-sentences, e.g. short phrases, or single words, are used by people in communication all the time.

People do not converse wholly in (tokens of) well-formed sentences. But the abstract idea of a sentence is

the basis for understanding even those expressions which are not sentences. In the overwhelming majority

of cases, the meanings of non-sentences can best be analysed by considering them to be abbreviations, or

incomplete versions, of whole sentences.

Sentence constituency a given sentence always consists of the same words, and in the same order. Any

change in the words, or in their order, makes a different sentence.

Utterance vs sentence: a string of words put together by the grammatical rules to express a complete

thought. They can be realized in utterances. VS Any stretch of talk/piece of speech by one person. It is used

by one person of a piece of language/some sounds. They are physical events.

A proposition that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some

state of affairs; the notion of a proposition is central to semantics. An abstract notion used to denote:

events, states, actions, processes, persons, etc., i.e. things referred to by expressions in the sentence.

The meanings of whole sentences involve propositions; the notion of a proposition is central to semantics.

The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express different propositions.

Thus if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is true, while the other is false,

we can be sure that they express different propositions. Propositions are clearly involved in the meanings of

other types of sentences, such as interrogatives and imperatives. Normally, when a speaker utters a simple

declarative sentence, he commits himself to the truth of the corresponding proposition: i.e. he asserts the

proposition. By uttering a simple interrogative or imperative, a speaker can mention a particular

proposition, without asserting its truth. Propositions, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any

particular language.

Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two sentences are perfect

translations of each other. “I am cold” and “J‟ai froid”.

The same proposition accessible to different persons: different individuals can grasp the same

proposition

The relationship between: abstract semantic entities (e.g. propositions);,linguistic entities (e.g. sentences);

actions (e.g. utterances).

State of affairs: An abstract notion used to denote: events, states, actions, processes, persons, etc. ; i.e.

things referred to by expressions in the sentence.

By means of REFERENCE, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are being

talked about. The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things. There are as

many potential referents for the phrase your left ear as there are people in the world with left ears. Thus

some (in fact very many) expressions in a language can have variable reference.

There are cases of expressions which in normal everyday conversation never refer to different things, i.e. in

most everyday situations that one can envisage, have constant reference.

The SENSE of an expression its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in

the language. The first of these semantic relationships that we will mention is the sameness of meaning, an

intuitive concept which we will illustrate by example. The sense of an expression is an abstraction, but it is

helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. When a

person understands fully what is said to him, it is reasonable to say that he grasps the sense of the

expression he hears.

! Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.

Just as there is something grammatically complete about a whole sentence, as opposed to a smaller

expression such as a phrase or a single word, there is something semantically complete about a

proposition, as opposed to the sense of a phrase or single word. One might say, roughly, that a proposition

corresponds to a complete independent thought.

To the extent that perfect translation between languages is possible (and this is a very debatable point), the

same sense can be said to belong to expressions in different languages.

The relationship between reference and utterance not so direct as that between sense and proposition,

but there is a similarity worth pointing out. Both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular

speakers on particular occasions. An act of referring is the picking out of a particular referent by a speaker

in the course of a particular utterance.

Constant reference there are cases of expressions which in normal everyday conversation never refer to

different things, i.e. in most everyday situations that one can envisage, have constant reference. In fact,

there is very little constancy of reference in language. In everyday discourse almost all of the fixing of

reference comes from the context in which expressions are used. Two different expressions can have the

same referent. The classic example is the Morning Star and the Evening Star, both of which normally refer

to the planet Venus.

A referring expression any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone (or a

clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used with a particular referent in mind: Bill Clinton is to

visit Ireland in May.

Referring expressions Some expressions can be used as: referring expressions only; non-referring

expressions; both depending on the kind of sentence they occur in.

Generics collective reading: smth is predicated of the whole class referred to.

Distributed reading smth is predicated of each member of the class

Using an indefinite article a/ an or a number without a definite determiner is an indication that the addressee

need not find a referent in the world.

Indefinite reference The identity of the referent is not germane to the message: that is, nothing hinges on

the individual features of the referent, only the class features indicated are presented as relevant. <....>This

has nothing to do with whether or not either speaker or hearer is in fact able to effect a unique identification

of the referent.

Resolving ambiguities can be resolved by the use of the word certain immediately following the indefinite

article a, as in, for example: “Nancy wants to marry a certain Norwegian”.

An opaque context a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by the addition of

a referring expression, but where the addition of different referring expressions, even though they refer to

the same thing/person, in a given situation, will yield sentences with different meanings when uttered in a

given situation.

Opaque contexts involve a certain kind of verbs: want, believe, think, wonder about, etc.; Are the reason

for the ambiguity of indefinite NPs (referring or non-referring):

Nancy wants to marry a Norwegian.

An equative sentence one which is used to assert the identity of the referents of two referring

expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent; e.g.: Tony Blair is the

Prime Minister.

The reversal test the order of the two referring expressions can be reversed without loss of acceptability.

E.g.: The largest city in Africa is Cairo vs Cairo is the largest city in Africa.

The reversal test is not a perfect diagnostic: What I need is a pint of Guinness vs A pint of Guinness is what

I need.

Indefinite and definite NPs can be ambiguous between referring and non-referring interpretations, with the

appropriate interpretation being highly dependent on linguistic context and the circumstances of utterance.

• My dog bit the postman. • Mrs Wraith is waiting for the downtown bus

Typically such sentences contain one or more referring expressions, plus some other words that do not form part of any of the referring expressions. It is on these other words that we shall now concentrate.

Predicator in each case it is possible to discern one word (or part of a word) which „carries more meaning‟ than the others. For instance, write in example (2) carries more specific information than is and the suffix -ing. If one strips away such less meaningful elements, one is left with a sequence of words, which, though ungrammatical and inelegant, can still be understood as expressing a proposition.

• The words (in, between, stink, red, genius) we have just isolated from their original sentences we call the predicators of those sentences.

• Notice also that the verb be in its various forms (is, was, are, were, am) is not the predicator in any example sentence.

The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence the word (sometimes a group of words) which does not belong to any of the referring expressions and which, of the remainder, makes the most specific contribution to the meaning of the sentence. Intuitively speaking, the predicator describes the state or process in which the referring expressions are involved. The predicators in sentences can be of various parts of speech: adjectives (red, asleep, hungry,

whimsical), verbs (write, stink, place), prepositions (in, between, behind), and nouns (crook,

genius). Despite the obvious syntactic differences between these different types of words,

semantically they all share the property of being able to function as the predicators of sentences.

Words of other parts of speech, such as conjunctions (and, but, or) and articles (the, a), cannot

serve as predicators in sentences.

• The semantic analysis of simple declarative sentences reveals two major semantic roles played by different subparts of the sentence. These are the role of predicator, illustrated above, and the role(s) of argument(s), played by the referring expression(s).

• E.g.:Juan is Argentinian

predicator: Argentinian, argument: Juan • Juan arrested Pablo

predicator: arrest, arguments: Juan, Pablo • Juan took Pablo to Rio

predicator: take, arguments: Juan, Pablo, Rio

The semantic analysis of a sentence into predicator and argument(s) does not correspond in most

cases to the traditional grammatical analysis of a sentence into subject and predicate, although

there is some overlap between the semantic and the grammatical analyses, as can be seen from

the examples above. We shall be concerned almost exclusively with the semantic analysis of

sentences, and so will not make use of the notion „grammatical predicate (phrase)‟. But we will use

the term „predicate‟ in a semantic sense developed within Logic.

A PREDICATE any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can function as the predicator of a sentence. E.g., hungry, in, crook, asleep, hit, show, bottle, wait for, in front of, are all predicates; and, or, but,

not, are not predicates.

The simplest type of proposition consists of two elements, an argument and a predicate. Put simply, the argument is what the proposition is „about‟, and the predicate is what is attributed to the argument. Take the proposition expressed by John is tall, where John designates a definite individual. This proposition has two parts: the individual designated by John, which functions as argument, and the property designated by is tall, which functions as predicate.

A „word‟, as we use the term, can be ambiguous, i.e. can have more than one sense, but we use „predicate‟ in a way which does not allow a predicate to be ambiguous. A predicate can have only one sense. Normally, the context in which we use a word will make clear what sense (what predicate) we have in mind.

• E.g.: The word bank has (at least) two senses. Accordingly, we might speak of the predicates bank1 and bank2.

• Similarly, we might distinguish between the predicates man1 (noun) human being, man2 (noun) male adult human being, and man3 (transitive verb) as in The crew manned the lifeboats.

• The term „predicate‟ identifies elements in the language system, independently of particular

example sentences. Thus, it would make sense to envisage a list of the predicates of

English, as included, say, in a dictionary.

• The term „predicator‟ identifies the semantic role played by a particular word (or group of

words) in a particular sentence. One can talk of the „predicator‟ in a particular sentence, but

not list „the predicators of English‟.

• A simple sentence only has one predicator, although it may well contain more than one

instance of a predicate.

• A tall, handsome stranger entered the saloon

• This sentence has just one predicator, enter, but the sentence also contains the words tall,

handsome, stranger, and saloon, all of which are predicates, and can function as

predicators in other sentences, e.g. John is tall, He is handsome, He is a stranger, and That

ramshackle building is a saloon.

• A simple proposition has only one predicate, but may have more than one argument. So, for

example, in the proposition John likes Mary, the predicate is likes, and John and Mary are

arguments; in the proposition John gave Mary a rose, John, Mary and a rose are

arguments, and gave is the predicate.

DEGREE of a predicate a number indicating the number of arguments it is normally

understood to have in simple sentences.

• E.g., asleep is a predicate of degree one (often called a one-place predicate); love (verb) is

a predicate of degree two (a two-place predicate)

• A verb that is understood most naturally with just two arguments, one as its subject, and

one as its object, is a two-place predicate. In Martha hit the parrot, hit is a two-place

predicate: it has an argument, Martha, as subject and an argument, the parrot, as direct

object.

• There are a few three-place predicates; the verb give is the best example.

• In the case of prepositions, nouns, and adjectives, we can also talk of one-, two-, or three-

place predicates.

• It is not clear whether there is any theoretical upper limit to the number of arguments a

predicate may take, but the most one is likely to encounter in linguistic semantic discussions

is four, exemplified by Mary paid John £500 for the car.

• Arguments: Mary, John, £500 , the car

• Predicate: paid (for)

The identity relation the relation found in equative sentences. In English, the identity of the

referents of two different referring expressions is expressed by a form of the verb be.

• George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States

• The 43rd President of the United States is George W. Bush

• The predicates of a language have a completely different function from the referring

expressions. The roles of these two kinds of meaning-bearing element cannot be

exchanged. Thus John is a bachelor makes good sense, but Bachelor is a John makes no

sense at all.

• Predicates include words from various parts of speech, e.g. common nouns, adjectives,

prepositions, and verbs .We have distinguished between predicates of different degrees

(one-place, two-place, etc.).

• We define the UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance as the particular world, real or imaginary (or part real, part imaginary), that the speaker assumes he is talking about at the time.

Example • When an astronomy lecturer, in a serious lecture, states that the Earth revolves around the

Sun, the universe of discourse is, we all assume, the real world (or universe). • When I tell my children a bedtime story and say „The dragon set fire to the woods with his

hot breath‟, the universe of discourse is not the real world but a fictitious world. • Most words mean what they mean regardless of who uses them, and when and where they

are used. This is exactly why words are so useful.

• Nevertheless, all languages do contain small sets of words whose meanings vary

systematically according to who uses them, and where and when they are used. These

words are called deictic words: the general phenomenon of their occurrence is called deixis.

The word deixis is from a Greek word meaning pointing.

A DEICTIC word one which takes some element of its meaning from the context or situation

(i.e. the speaker, the addressee, the time and the place) of the utterance in which it is used.

Example • The first person singular pronoun I is deictic. When Ben Heasley says „I‟ve lost the contract‟,

the word I here refers to Ben Heasley. • When Penny Carter says „I‟ll send you another one‟, the I here refers to Penny Carter. • Thus, someone referring to a book held by another person would say that book, but the

holder of the book, referring to the same book, would say this book; referring to 8 July on 7

July, one would say tomorrow, but referring to the same day on 9 July, one would say

yesterday; a speaker refers to himself as /, but his hearer, referring to the same person,

would say you.

• „The reference of certain kinds of expression is determined in relation to features of the

utterance-act: the time, the place, and the participants, i.e. those with the role of speaker or

addressee. This phenomenon is known as deixis and the expressions concerned are called

deictic.‟

„Deixis directly concerned with the relationship between the structure of a language and the

context in which the language is used. It can be defined as the phenomenon whereby features of

context of utterance or speech event are encoded by lexical and/or grammatical means in a

language. Linguistic expressions that are employed typically as deictic expressions or deictics

include (i) demonstratives, (ii) first- and second- person pronouns, (iii) tense markers, (vi) adverbs

of times and space, and (v) motion verbs.‟

The deictic devices in a language commit a speaker to set up a frame of reference around herself. <…> every language carries an implicit division of the space around the current speaker, a division of time relative to the act of speaking, and , via pronouns, a shorthand naming system for the participants involved in the talk.

• In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original utterance (the utterance being reported) may be translated into other, possibly non-deictic, terms in order to preserve the original reference.

Example • John: „I‟ll meet you here tomorrow.‟ • Margaret (reporting John‟s utterance some time later): „John said he would meet me there

the next day.‟ • In this example, five adjustments are made in the reported speech, namely: I → he, „ll ( will)

→ would, you → me, here → there, tomorrow → the next day

• Other languages vary in the number of deictic divisions of space available to the speaker.

We can compare a two-term adverbial distinction between here and there in English with a

three-term aqui „here‟, ahi „(just) there‟, and alli „(over) there‟ distinction in Spanish. Spanish

parallels this with a three-term demonstrative system: esto „this‟, eso „that (just there)‟ and

aquello „that (over there)‟.

• There are good reasons for all languages to have deictic terms. A language without such

terms could not serve the communicative needs of its users anything like as well as a real

human language. Deictic expressions bring home very clearly that when we consider

individual sentences from the point of view of their truth, we cannot in many cases consider

them purely abstractly, i.e. simply as strings of words made available by the language

system. The truth of a sentence containing a deictic expression can only be considered in

relation to some hypothetical situation of utterance.

The traditionally called the definite article, and a the indefinite article. But what exactly is

definiteness? An answer can be given in terms of several notions already discussed, in

particular the notion of referring expression, identifying the referent of a referring expression,

and universe of discourse. A new notion is also needed, that of context.

The CONTEXT of an utterance a small subpart of the universe of discourse shared by

speaker and hearer, and includes facts about the topic of the conversation in which the

utterance occurs, and also facts about the situation in which the conversation itself takes place.

If I meet a stranger on a bus and we begin to talk about the weather (and not about anything else), then facts about the weather (e.g. that it is raining, that it is warmer than yesterday, etc.), facts about the bus (e.g. that it is crowded), and also obvious facts about the two speakers (e.g. their sex) are part of the context of utterances in this conversation. Facts not associated with the topic of the conversation or the situation on the bus (e.g. that England won the World Cup in 1966, or that kangaroos live in Australia) are not part of the context of this conversation, even though they may happen to be known to both speakers.

The exact context of any utterance can never be specified with complete certainty. The notion of context is very flexible (even somewhat vague). Note that facts about times and places very distant from the time and place of the utterance itself can be part of the context of that utterance, if the topic of conversation happens to be about these distant times and places.

• If some entity (or entities) (i.e. person(s), object(s), place(s), etc.) is/are the ONLY entity (or entities) of its/their kind in the context of an utterance, then the definite article (the) is the appropriate article to use in referring to that entity (or those entities).

• Contexts are constructed continuously during the course of a conversation. As a

conversation progresses, items previously unmentioned and not even associated with the

topics so far discussed are mentioned for the first time and then become part of the context

of the following utterance. Eventually, perhaps, things mentioned a long time previously in

the conversation will „fade out‟ of the context, but how long it takes for this to happen cannot

be specified exactly.

• The appropriateness of the definite article is dependent on the context in which it is used.

• When something is introduced for the first time into a conversation, it is appropriate to use

the indefinite article, a. Once something is established in the context of the conversation, it

is appropriate to use the. But the definite article the is not the only word which indicates

definiteness in English.

DEFINITENESS a feature of a noun phrase selected by a speaker to convey his assumption

that the hearer will be able to identify the referent of the noun phrase, usually because it is the

only thing of its kind in the context of the utterance, or because it is unique in the universe of

discourse.

• That book is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker assumes the

hearer can tell which book is being referred to.

• The personal pronoun she is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker

assumes the hearer can tell which person is being referred to.

• The Earth is definite. It is the only thing in a normal universe of discourse known by this

name.

The three main types of definite noun phrase in English are (1) Proper names, e.g. John, Queen

Victoria, (2) personal pronouns, e.g. he, she, it, and (3) phrases introduced by a definite

determiner, such as the, that, this (e.g. the table, this book, those men).

• By contrast, expressions like a man, someone, and one are all indefinite.

Definite and indefinite referring expressions may be more or less appropriate in different contexts.

But utterances which differ only in that one contains a definite referring expression where the other

has an indefinite referring expression (provided these expressions have the same referent) do not

differ in truth value. Considered objectively, the referent of a referring expression (e.g. a/the fork) is

in itself neither definite nor indefinite. (Can you tell from close inspection of a fork whether it is a

„definite‟ or an „indefinite‟ fork?) The definiteness of a referring expression tells us nothing about

the referent itself, but rather relates to the question of whether the referent has been mentioned (or

taken for granted) in the preceding discourse. The definiteness of a referring expression gives the

hearer a clue in identifying its referent.

• You know what the world must be like for it to be true, or for it to be false. In other words you know its TRUTH CONDITIONS. Because of this, a glance out of the window is enough to tell you whether the statement is true or not.

• These windows a metaphor to visualize the fact that:

The truth or falsity of a statement like (e.g.: The window of your friend‟s house in Greece?)

depends on the state of affairs in the world; (It may be helpful to think of each window as a

„possible situation‟ or a „possible world‟, in which a particular state of affairs holds).

• CONNECTIVES symbols like & which can be used to connect statements and give a

combined truth value

• The meaning of a sentence is connected with its truth conditions.

• Some sentences always true or false regardless of the state of the world (others depend

on the particular state of affairs).

• When more than one statement has to be evaluated, a number of possible combinations

arise, and the overall truth value depends on the combination being considered.

• The formula for determining the overall truth value depends on the connectives.

• If two expressions have the same meaning, they have the same truth conditions.

• If an expression has more than one meaning, then each interpretation has different truth

conditions.

• Each individual statement has been treated as a whole without paying attention to its

internal structure.

ATOMIC the basic sentences (represented by P,Q etc. in the truth tables, as if they had no

internal structure.

„The meaning of a whole expression depends on the meaning of its parts + the way in which they

are put together.‟

• <…> this RELATION can be thought of as the nucleus of the meaning of a sentence. It holds the sentence together, both:

– by telling us what kind of state of affairs is being described, and also – specifying what individuals are required to play a significant role in the situation.

• <…> if the relation indeed holds between the specified individuals, the statement will be true.

The following sentences describe the state of affairs as being true of only one individual. Although this can still be thought as a one-place relation <…>, it is more usual in this case to call it a PROPERTY of that individual (snoring is a property of mary, etc.).

(3.4) 1 Mary snores.

2 Transylvania is beautiful.

3 John is a doctor. • The importance of different roles can be illustrated with two-place relations. • E.g., „the cat has eaten the goldfish‟ • An eating situation requires two entities, one to play the ROLE of eating, and the other to

play the role pf getting eaten. In English, word order is the main way of telling who eats who.

• PROPERTIES also assign roles, though in this case only one; the snoring situation requires a snorer (a role played by Mary in (3.4)).

• There is no generally accepted terminology for classifying roles, though there are several systems on offer. Thematic roles:

AGENT the initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition, e.g.:

6.2 David cooked the rashers.

6.3 The fox jumped out of the ditch.

PATIENTthe entity undergoing the effect of some action, often undergoing some change in state, e.g.:

6.4 Enda cut back these bushes.

6.5 The sun melted the ice.

THEME the entity that is moved by an action, or whose location is described, e.g.:

6.6 Roberto passed the ball wide.

6.7 The book is in the library.

EXPERIENCER the entity which is aware of the action or state described by the predicate but which is not in control of the action or state, e.g.:

6.8 Kevin felt ill.

6.9 Mary saw the smoke.

6.10 Lorcan heard the door shut.

BENEFICIARY the entity for whose benefit the action was performed, e.g.:

6.11 Robert filled in the form for his grandmother.

6.12 They baked me a cake.

INSTRUMENT the means by which the action is performed or something comes about, e.g.:

6.13 She cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe.

6.14 They signed the treaty with the same pen.

LOCATION the place in which something is situated or takes place, e.g.:

6.15 The monster was hiding under the bed.

6.16 The band played in a marquee.

GOAL the entity towards which something moves either literally as in 6.17 or metaphorically as in 6.18:

6.17 Sheila handed her licence to the policeman.

6.18 Pat told the joke to his friends.

SOURCE the entity from which something moves either literally as in 6.19 or metaphorically as in 6.20:

6.19 The plane came back from Kinshasa.

6.20 We got the idea from a French magazine.

Other simple tests suggested by Jackendoff (1990) include predicting that for an ACTOR (X) it will make sense to ask 6.27 below, and for a PATIENT (Y) that it will be able to occur in the frames in 6.28.

6.27 What did X do?

6.28 a. What happened to Y was…

b. What X did to Y was…

Some writers have suggested other thematic roles in addition to the ones we have discussed. For example a role of PERCEPT is sometimes used for the entity which is perceived or experienced, e.g.:

6.32 a. The general inspected the troops.

b. Did you hear that thunder?

c. That shark frightened the swimmers.

A role of RECIPIENT is sometimes defined, e.g. by Andrews (1985), as a type of GOAL involved in actions describing changes of possession, e.g.:

6.33 a. He sold me this wreck.

b. He left his fortune to the church.

While these roles, ACTOR, AGENT, PATIENT, EXPERIENCER, THEME, INSTRUMENT, etc. may seem intuitively clear, in practice it is difficult to know which role to assign to a particular noun phrase. For example, in a sentence like 6.34 to the lighthouse is clearly a GOAL, and in 6.35 him is a BENEFICIARY, but in 6.36 is Margarita the GOAL/RECIPIENT, or BENEFICIARY, or both?

Jackendoff (1972) suggested that one entity might fulfil more than one role. In Jackendoff (1990) the idea that one nominal might fulfil more than one role is elaborated into a theory of tiers of thematic roles: a thematic tier, which describes spatial relations, and an action tier which describes ACTOR-PATIENT-type relations. His examples include the following (1990:126-7):

6.38 a. Sue hit Fred.

THEME GOAL (thematic tier)

ACTOR PATIENT (action tier)

b. Pete threw the ball.

SOURCE THEME (thematic tier)

ACTOR PATIENT (action tier)

c. Bill entered the room.

THEME GOAL (thematic tier)

ACTOR (action tier)

d. Bill received a letter.

GOAL THEME (thematic tier)

(action tier)

Thus Fred in 6.38a is simultaneously the GOAL and the PATIENT of the action. The gaps in a tier reflect instances where the nominal has only one thematic role: thus the room in 6.38c has no role in the action tier. Presumably these tiers would divide thematic roles into two types, perhaps as follows:

6.39 a. Action tier roles: ACTOR, AGENT, EXPERIENCER, PATIENT, BENEFICIARY, INSTRUMENT

b. Thematic tier roles: THEME, GOAL, SOURCE, LOCATION Thematic roles A set of choices which face a speaker seeking to describe a situation concerns how to portray the roles of any entities involved.

• <…> there are often restrictions on what kind of thing can fill a given role in a situation. For example, in an eating situation, the eater must be some sort of life form; and the thing eaten has to be something concrete (it can‟t be an abstraction like „unity‟ or „relativity‟).

• E.g.: *Unity has eaten relativity.

A particular case of role assignment is that some roles may need to be assigned to a whole statement. In (3.6), for example, the main relation is believe. This holds between a believer (who must be something like a human being) and the thing believed, which will normally be a statement.

(3.6) Mary believes [that her husband snores].

Logic(in a narrow sense) deals with meanings in a language system, not with actual behavior of

any sort. Logic deals most centrally with PROPOSITIONS.

• A system for describing logical thinking contains a notation for representing propositions unambiguously and rules of inference defining how propositions go together to make up valid arguments.

Predicate calculus a system for the representation of the internal structure of simple

propositions.

Statements analysed in this way are given a special notation: the name of the relation is written first, and then the role-fillers are listed in brackets (often abbreviated to single lower-case letters). The former is known as the PREDICATE and the latter as its ARGUMENTS:

(3.7) • „John loves Mary‟ • love (john, mary) or love (j, m) • (predicate = love; arguments = john, mary)

<…> the predicate is written as the most basic form of the word („love‟, rather than „loves‟ or

„loved‟). The endings on such words are chiefly grammatical phenomena – they do not affect the

relation being described.

In translating between predicate-argument formulas and English, <…> certain clues are given by

parts of speech.

Relations often correspond to verbs. At other times they correspond to adjectives or other parts of

speech introduced by the copula („to be‟).

The argument places filled <…> mostly by proper names.

Logic provides a notation for unambiguously representing the essentials of propositions.

Anything that is not a predicator or a referring expression simply omitted from logical notation.

The reasons for eliminating elements such as forms of the verb be, article (a, the), tense markers

(past, present), and certain prepositions partly a matter of serious principle and partly a matter

of convenience. The most serious principle involved is the traditional concentration of logic on

truth.

Articles, a and the, do not affect the truth of the propositions expressed by simple sentences.

Accordingly, they are simply omitted from the relatively basic logical formulae <…>. This is an

example of the omission of material from logical formulae on principled grounds.

In the case of some, but not all, prepositions, e.g., at, in, on, under, there are similar principled

reasons for not including them in logical formulae.

Some prepositions contribute substantially to the sense of the sentence they occur in, e.g. Sidney

put his hat ON the table, whereas in other cases, prepositions seem merely to be required by the

grammar of the language when certain verbs and adjectives are used, e.g. present someone WITH

something, or be envious OF someone.

Prepositions like these which appear to make no significant contribution to the logical sense of a

sentence are omitted from the logical formulae representing the proposition concerned.

Prepositions which do make a contribution, on the other hand, must be included in logical formulae

for propositions.

In effect, we treat expressions like look for, look at, look after as single predicates when they

contain prepositions that contribute in an important way to the sense of the sentence. This is

natural, as many such expressions are indeed synonymous with single-word predicates, e.g. seek,

regard, supervise.

<…> the relation denoted by a verb like „love‟ or „eat‟ is a relation in the mathematical sense of the

word. A relation in mathematics can be defined in terms of ordered pairs.

The denotation of a (two-place) relation is simply a set of such pairs.

Thus the relation author_of pairs off Shakespeare with Hamlet, Pasternak with Dr Zhivago and

Kazantzakis with Zorba the Greek.

The whole set of such pairings is the denotation of author_of.

Good examples of ordered pairs occur in elliptical sentences in English, such as the following. For

each sentence give the relation and the ordered pairs of which it holds.

a „John wants beer, Bill cider, Mary gin, Sarah lemonade, and Sebastian sherry.‟

b „Maria is studying Turkish, Ali Chinese, Suresh Hausa, Noriko Indonesian and Natasha Arabic.

The denotation of a one-place predicate a property – in this case, this can be seen as not a set

of ordered pairs but simply a set of individuals.

• Thus to say „Rusty is a dog‟ is to say that rusty is a member of the set of dogs. • This chapter has been about the way sentence meanings are composed. The nucleus of its

meaning comprises a relation and one or more roles.

If the relation holds between the specified role-filling entities then the statement is true; if it

does not then it is false.

If the roles are not filled (or not filled appropriately) then the sentence is to a greater or lesser

degree anomalous, and hence difficult or impossible to process.

The chapter has also introduced a useful notation which reflects this way of analysing sentences.

A predicate with its arguments shows some of the internal structure of the sentences.

There have already been some instances where this internal structure shows the relationship

between certain sentences which intuitively seem to be related in meaning, even though their truth

conditions may be different. This grasp of meaning relations is one of the most important semantic

intuitions.

___

Negation (not)

Conjuction & (and)

Disjunction V (or)

Paraphrase

Contradiction ⊨

Implication → (If P, then Q)

Equivalence ↔ (mutual implication); ≡

(P if, and only if, Q)

• The truth table for negation: "It's not the case that P ", or, more simply, "Not P ”

• The truth table for conjuction: "P and Q "

• The truth table for disjunction: "P or Q "

a) Paraphrase --> the same meaning

i P – Bill bought this second-hand car from Alex.

ii Q – Alex sold this secon-hand car to Bill.

b) Contradiction opposite meaning

i P – Maria‟s husband never does the washing up

ii Q – Maria‟s husband sometimes does the washing up

c) Implication if the first is true, then the second is true too; “If P, then Q ”

i P – Mary has a Burmese cat.

ii Q – Mary has a cat. • Is marked as → (If P, then Q) • The truth table for implication

• Definition in words: – „→‟ joins two statements P and Q to form a composite statement P→Q whose value

is true unless P is true and Q false. • Two sentences P and Q are paraphrases if P implies Q and Q implies P. This relation can

be written P ↔ Q (suggesting „mutual implication‟) or

P ≡ Q („equivalence‟) • Contradiction A slightly more complicated relation. • Suggests „opposite meaning‟, but „opposite‟ can have different senses.

– Different kind of opposites:

A) Maria‟s husband never does the washing up.

B) Maria‟s husband always does the washing up.

C) Maria‟s husband sometimes does the washing up.

• A and B can both be true, but it is possible that neither is true. The two lie at two extremes.

• The relation of incompatibility • A and C while both of them cannot be true; one of them must be; the two

complement each other in the same way as P and P complement each other • The relation of contradiction. In traditional logic „contraries‟

Contradiction & incompatibility • Two sentences P and Q are incompatible if

– P implies Q and Q implies P • P and Q are contradictory if

– P is equivalent to Q – and Q is equivalent to P

Meaning relations In many cases meaning relations between sentences are the result of

relations holding at a lexical level between their component parts

IMPLICATION 1. P – „Tiny is an alsatian.‟ 2. Q – „Tiny is a dog.‟

P implies Q because of a meaning relation between the two predicates alsatian and dog. • The relation between these two word senses cannot be called implication because

implication is a relation between truth values, and predicates do not have truth values (only statements do).

• The corresponding relation between word senses is called HYPONOMY.

Hyponymy • -onym from Greek root meaning name • A is a hyponym of B if it is impossible for an entity to be A without also being B • E.g., alsatian is a hyponym of dog because it is impossible for something to be an alsatian

without also being a dog.

Hyponymy sets • The denotaion of the predicate should be thought of as a set. • While „Tiny‟ denotes an individual, „alsatian‟ denotes a set of all alsatians, and „dog‟ the set

of all dogs. • Sent 1 is true if the individual tiny is a member of the set of alsatians, while 2 is true if he is a

member of the set of dogs. • To say that alsatian is a hyponym of dog is to say that the set of alsatians is a SUBSET of

the set of dogs; it is impossible to be a member of the first without also being a member of the second.

• Venn diagram: A represents the set of alsatians, B the set of dogs and x any random individual.

1. P – „Tiny is an alsatian.‟ 2. Q – „Tiny is a dog.‟

• Here the predicate was a one-place relation (or property), so that its denotation was an ordinary set of individuals.

• For a two-place relation exactly the same holds, except that the set denoted is a set of orderred pairs.

• For a three-place relation it will be a set of orderred triples and so on. • Synonyms can be defined as word forms which have at least one sense in common.

They should also denote the same set. 1. „Mary is truthful.‟ 2. „Mary is honest.‟

• It is impossible to be truthful without being honest and vice versa. Thus truthfull is a hyponym of honest and vice versa.

• The two word senses denote the same set. • Two sets are equal if and only if each is a subset of the other. • This lexical relation is responsible for the fact that the two sentences „Mary is truthful.‟ &

„Mary is honest.‟ are paraphrases.

Antonymy • If two words have opposite meanings, they are antonyms. • „opposite‟ has at least two different senses (both at the sentential and lexical level)

(4.11) 1. John is happy.

2. John is unhappy

(4.12) 1. Mary is a smoker.

2. Mary is a non-smoker. • In the first case, the sets denoted by happy and unhappy are completely separate (disjoint).

There are no individuals in the intersection between them. However, there may be individuals that are outside both sets.

• In (4.12) each set is the complement of the other: they are disjoint (as before), but this time together they take up the entire space under consideration, and each individual must be in one or the other

Two kinds of antonyms: – Incompatible antonyms – Contradictory antonyms

• The presence of the word antonym is to serve as a reminder that we are talking about a lexical relationship and not a sentential one.

Meaning relations • Notice how these lexical relations parallel with sentential ones: • The subset relation ⊆ corresponding with implication →

• At the sentential level the relation of implication can be used to characterize a variety of relations including paraphrase, incompatibility and contradiction. This analysis is based on truth values.

• Similar relations hold between word senses (specifically those of predicates). The relation of hyponymy corresponds to implication (but holds between word senses, not statements or truth values.

• If the denotations of predicates are regarded as sets, then hyponyms can be interpreted as subsets. This approach, illustrated by Venn diagrams, is often a useful model to have in mind when considering word meaning.

Meaning relations

• The sense of an expression can be seen as a way of classifying things• The word „book‟, used as the thing you may have in front of you, refers to it as a book ,

i.e. as an instantation of a particular bundle of properties which are shared by other books, but not by cars or chocolates.

• This classification does not mean putting objects into arbitrary pigeon-holes.• The hyponym relation means that an object can be classified at a more general level

or at a more specific level.• Textbook hyponym of book

1 (there can be book

2 ,etc.)

• Book1 can be used to classify more objects than textbook can, but the latter is more

informative.• Objects can be classified in different ways depending on how much info it is desirable

to convey.• The hyponym relation between senses should be distinguished from the relation

between a sense and the individuals which it classifies (its denotation).• The object in front of you „is a‟ textbook, and also „is a‟ book, in that it instantiates (is

an instance of ) these word senses.• A textbook (or more precisely the concept textbook) is a kind of book, in that it is a

species or type of book.• The two different relations are sometimes known by the mnemonics „isa‟ and „ako‟

respectively – (the terms come from artificial intelligence)

• "isa" signifies "is a". • It acts as a relation between an object and a type, and specifies that the object is a

member of the type . • Fido is a dog signifies that the object Fido is a member of the set of all dogs.• Denotation== instance

• "ako" signifies "a kind of". • It acts as a relation between two types of things, and specifies that one is a subset of

the other . • For example, chair ako furniture signifies that the concept of chair is a subconcept of

the concept of furniture, or to put it another way, the set of all chairs is a subset of the set of all furniture.

These simple relations can be used to build up a „semantic network‟ networks by which wor

meaning are related. These relations are responsible for expectations which enable us to draw

certain conclusions.

The notion of appears to play an important role in how things are classified (book and resemblancereader) The two have no obvious properties in common, but both have a resemblance (a different resemblance) to the book you are reading

Lexical and encyclopaedic knowledge

– This exploits the difference between a lexicon (or mental dictionary) and an encyclopaedia, which is pretty well entrenched into our culture.

• The denotation of a word sense can be modelled as a set. • Typical ( ) members of a set prototypical

vs • Untypical ( ) members of a set. non-prototypical/ peripheral• In many cases denotation can be thought of as equivalent to extension (Hurford,

Heasley & Smith 2007:90)•

Someone who knows how to use the word cat has an idea of the potential set of objects that can be referred to as cats, i.e. he has some concept of the set of all cats. (This idea or concept may only be a vague, or fuzzy, one <...>). This leads us to the notion of the extension of a predicate.

The EXTENSION of a one-place predicate the set of all individuals to (partial) which that

predicate can truthfully be applied. It is the set of things which can POTENTIALLY be referred to by using an expression whose main element is that predicate. The original motivation for the idea of extension was to explain the ability of speakers of a language to group entities having similar characteristics, such as cats or chickens, into distinct mental categories and to refer to these objects in the world, using linguistic expressions containing predicates.

In addition, the idea of extension was to explain their ability as hearers to identify the referents of referring expressions containing predicates, and their ability to make and understand descriptive

statements using predicates, as in Atkins is a cat. But speakers are in fact only able to do these things in normal situations. The idea of extension is too ambitious, extending to all situations. In fact, a speaker does not have a perfectly clear idea of what is a cat and what is not a cat.

A PROTOTYPE of a predicate an object which is held to be very TYPICAL of the kind of object which can be referred to by an expression containing the predicate. In other words, the prototype of a predicate can be thought of as the most typical member of the extension of a predicate .

Shared prototypes objects on which there is general agreement that they are typical examples of the class of objects described by a certain predicate.

In a language community as wide as that of English, there are problems with this idea of prototype, due to cultural differences between various English speaking communities.

Extension not clear; prototype clearSome predicates which do not have clearly defined extensions (e.g. colour terms like red and blue)

do in fact have clear prototypes. Influential research in the 1960s by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated that although one cannot be sure exactly where red shades off into pink or orange, for example, there is general agreement in the English speech community about the central, focal, or prototypical examples of

red.• The idea of prototype has at least some advantage over that of extension.• But in other cases, such as abstract mass terms (e.g. ambition) there is about as

much difficulty in identifying the prototype of a predicate as there is of identifying its extension.

• Often the untypicality of entities can be traced to their membership of a particular subset, which is the denotation of a hyponym.

• This subset may have its own built-in expectations. • The „expectations‟ associated with word senses are often known as default inferences .• They can be studied using a suitably adapted logic called default logic.• The idea is that such an inference holds „provided there is no information that it is

incompatible with the conclusion‟.• If Tweety is a bird, then we infer that Tweety flies – provided we do not know that

Tweety is a flightless bird, say a penguin.• In a semantic network, all the properties associated with a concept are automatically

associated also with any concept which stands in an „ako‟ relation with it (i.e. all its hyponyms).

A concept inherits properties from the more general concept of which it is a hyponym; it also introduces extra properties of it own to that subset.• A concept can be a hyponym of several more general concepts at once.• Coin

– a kind of metallic object– a kind of medium exchange

• It will inherit from both of these more general concepts. On the one hand, it has a particular economic value, on the other

hand, it has the properties associated with a metallic object.• Sometimes used interchangeably• A stereotype is related to a prototype but is not the same thing.

The STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL characteristics or features of things to which the predicate may be applied. The stereotype of a predicate may often specify a range of possibilities (e.g. the range of colours of typical cats), but an individual prototype of this predicate will necessarily take some particular place within this range (e.g. black).

Another important difference between prototype and stereotype is that a speaker may well know a stereotype for some predicate, such as ghost, witchdoctor, flying saucer, but not actually be acquainted with any prototypes of it. Stereotypes of expressions for things learnt about at second

hand, through descriptions rather than direct experience, are generally known in this way.

One kind of antonymy occurs when one predicate expresses the same relation as the other but with arguments reversed – the CONVERSE of the relation. Give converses for the following predicates, and state both sentences as predicate-argument formulas.

a. 12 is twice 6. b. Tokyo is bigger than London London is smaller than Tokyo. c. Chomsky was a student of Harris. d. Elizabeth I succeeded Mary. e. Belgrade is below Vienna (on the Danube).

Strictly speaking only two-place relations have converses. However some three-place predicates are related by a similar permutation of their arguments (e.g. „John gave the book to Mary‟ vs „Mary received the book from John‟). Imagine the following scenario: Don Marino hands Antonio a gun, and Antonio hands Don Marino a thousand dollars. Express this using the three-place verbs „buy‟, „sell‟, „cost‟ and „fetch‟.

The levels of a semantic network do not seem to have the same status.