Semantics 1

• Lexical semantics (concerned with the meaning of words, morphemes)

• Sentential semantics (concerned with meaning of larger syntactic units (phrases, clauses, sentences)

• Discourse semantics (meaning that is created in context, very close to pragmatics)

it is conventional (we agree on the meaning) but also arbitrary (no natural connection)

• it is the relation between meaning and spoken/written form

1. words are labels that point to things in the real world (problem: you can’t point at abstract concepts, unicorns don’t exist? things can be described by many different words)

2. meaning is the relationship betweeen form and mental concept (concept = independent of language, meaning= connects concept to a word)

3. meaning of a word = its use in the language (problematic, since it would make a words sth fluid)

Sense= is close to a mental concept, the conditions a thing has to meet so we feel a word is appropriate to describe it

Reference= relationship of expression and the referent

(referent= object picked out by the word)

Denotation= dictionary meaning

Connotation= all associations that come to mind

Intension= analysis of the components of word meaning (semantic properties shared by all members)

Extension= all objects in the real world that satisfy the intension

idea: a finite reportoire of meaning elements exists and they can be combined in different ways

eg.: descriptions of man, boy, woman, girl

pros: easy to understand and apply

cons: question of which features are essential, sometimes it’s impossible to find core attributes, features don’t always cover the full picture (bachelors),

by Luis Wittgenstein, tries to solve problems of semantic feature analysis by speaking of family resemblance and finding potential features that overlap (example GAME)

words that are similar, but don’t have total sameness

sometimes synonyms don’t fit, sometimes they change the formality of a sentence

words that have opposite meanings

• gradable antonymy: opposites along a scale, negation of one doesn’t imply the other (not big doesn’t mean small)

• non-gradable antonymy: contemplary pairs, negating one DOES imply the other (not alive does mean dead)

• reversives (dress - undress, enter - exit)

meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another (animal - dog, vegetable - carrot)

• superordinate= higher level term

• co-hyponyms= words that share the same superordinate

two or more (written) forms have the same pronounciation, eg. flour-flower, right-write, to-two-too

one form has two or more different meanings

eg. pupil (school) - pupil (eye)

one form having multiple meanings that are all related by extension

eg. foot (of a person, a bed, a mountain)

a relationship based on close connection in everyday life, one word can be used to refer to the other

eg. The White House announced = the Presient announced