Understanding semantics

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Content

Ch.1 Meaning and semantics
Ch.2 Descriptive, social and expressive meaning
Ch.3 Meanings and readings
Ch.4 Meaning and logic
Ch.5 Meaning relations
Ch.6 Predication
Ch.7 Meaning components
Ch.8 Meaning and language comparison
Ch.9 Meaning and cognition
Ch.10 Sentence meaning and formal semantics

PART I Basic concepts and phenomena

1. Meaning and semantics 3-18

1.1 Levels of meaning 3

1.1.1 Expression meaning 4
1.1.2 Utterance meaning 7
1.1.3 Communicative meaning 9

1.2 Sentence meaning and compositionality 11

1.2.1 Grammatical meaning 12
1.2.2 Syntactic structure and combination rules 13
1.2.3 The principle of compositionality 14

Further reading

2. Descriptive, social and expressive meaning 19-38

2.1 Meanings are concepts 19

2.1.1 The meaning of a word 19
2.1.2 The meaning of a sentence 21

2.2 Descriptive meaning 22

2.2.1 Descriptive meaning and reference 22
2.2.2 Denotations and truth conditions 25
2.2.3 Proposition and sentence type 26

2.3 Meaning and social interaction: social meaning 27

2.3.1 Expressions with social meaning 27
2.3.2 Social meaning in Japanese 30

2.4 Meaning and subjectivity: expressive meaning 31

2.4.1 Expressive meaning 32
2.4.2 Social versus expressive meaning 34

2.5 Connotations 35

Exercises
Further reading

3. Meanings and readings 39-56

3.1 Lexemes 39

3.2 Homonymy, polysemy and vagueness 42

3.2.1 Homonymy 43
3.2.2 Polysemy 44
3.2.3 Vagueness 45

3.3 Synonymy 46

3.4 Sentence readings and meaning shifts 46

3.4.1 Syntactic ambiguity 46
3.4.2 Interpretation in context 47
3.4.3 Disambiguation and elimination 47
3.4.4 Metonymical shift 48
3.4.5 Metaphorical shift 49
3.4.6 Differentiation 50

3.5 The Principle of Consistent Interpretation 52

3.6 Meaning shifts and polysemy 53

Exercises
Further reading

4. Meaning and logic 57-84

4.1 Logical basics 57

4.1.1 Donald Duck and Aristotle 57
4.1.2 The Principle of Polarity 60
4.1.3 Negation 61

4.2 Logical properties of sentences 62

4.3 Logical relations between sentences 64

4.3.1 Logical entailment 64
4.3.2 Logical equivalence 67
4.3.3 Logical contrariety 67
4.3.4 Logical contradiction 68
4.3.5 Logical relations involving logically true or false sentences 69
4.3.6 Logical relations under the assumption of contingency 71

4.4 Sentential logic 73

4.5 Logical relations between words 74

4.6 Logic and meaning 77

4.6.1 The semantic status of logical equivalence 77
4.6.2 The semantic status of logical entailment 80
4.6.3 Logic and semantics 81

Exercises
Further reading

5. Meaning relations 85-98

5.1 Hyponymy 85

5.1.1 Hyponymy 85
5.1.2 Regular compounds 86

5.2 Oppositions 87

5.2.1 Antonyms 88
5.2.2 Directional opposites 90
5.2.3 Complementaries 91
5.2.4 Heteronyms 91
5.2.5 Converses 92

5.3 Lexical fields 94

5.3.1 The notion of a lexical field 94
5.3.2 Small fields 94
5.3.3 Taxonomies 95
5.3.4 Meronymies 96

Exercises
Further reading

6. Predication 99-122

6.1 Predications contained in a sentence 99

6.2 Predicates and arguments 101

6.3 Verbs 102

6.3.1 Major types of verbs 103
6.3.2 Referential verb arguments 104
6.3.3 Deciding on the number of arguments 105

6.4 Nouns and adjectives 106

6.4.1 Major types of nouns 106
6.4.2 Major types of adjectives 107
6.4.3 Arguments of nouns and adjectives in predicative use 109

6.5 Predicate logic notation 110

6.6 Thematic roles 111

6.7 Selectional restrictions 114

6.7.1 Selectional restrictions of verbs 114
6.7.2 The process of fusion 116
6.7.3 Selectional restrictions and meaning shifts 117
6.7.4 Semantic irregularity 118

6.8 Summary 119

Exercises
Further reading

PART II Theoretical approaches

7. Meaning components 125-152

7.1 The structuralist approach 127

7.1.1 Language as a system of signs 127
7.1.2 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations 129

7.2 Applying the structuralist approach to meaning 130

7.2.1 Semantic units: morphemes and lexemes 130
7.2.2 Paradigmatic and syntagmatic semantic relations 131

7.3 Semantic features 132

7.3.1 Binary semantic features 132
7.3.2 Application to paradigmatic relations 134
7.3.3 Application to combinatorial meaning properties 134
7.3.4 Ideal properties of semantic features 135
7.3.5 Evaluation of the binary feature approach 138

7.4 Semantic formulae 140

7.4.1 Dowty's decompositional semantics 141
7.4.2 Jackendoff's Conceptual Semantics 142

7.5 Semantic primes: Wierzbicka's Natural Semantic Metalanguage 145

7.6 Summary and evaluation of the approaches to decomposition 148

Exercises
Further reading

8. Meaning and language comparison 153-170

8.1 Translation problems 153

8.2 Headache, international 156

8.3 Relativism and universalism 161

8.4 Berlin and Kay's investigation of colour terms 163

8.5 Consequences 167

Exercises
Further reading

9. Meaning and cognition 171-210

9.1 Categories and concepts 172

9.2 Prototype Theory 174

9.2.1 The traditional model of categorization 174
9.2.2 Prototypes 175
9.2.3 Fuzzy boundaries 176
9.2.4 Family resemblance 177
9.2.5 Degrees of membership 178
9.2.6 The prototype model of categorization 178
9.2.7 What kinds of entities are prototypes? 180
9.2.8 Which features make up the prototype? 181
9.2.9 Similarity 182

9.3 The hierarchical organization of categories 183

9.3.1 The basic level 183
9.3.2 Properties of the basic level 185

9.4 Challenges to Prototype Theory 186

9.4.1 Graded membership vs. graded structure 186
9.4.2 Fuzzy boundaries 188
9.4.3 Summary 191

9.5 Semantics and Prototype Theory 191

9.5.1 Cognitive Semantics 191
9.5.2 Polarization 192
9.5.3 Flexible concepts: vagueness 194
9.5.4 Means of differentiation 196
9.5.5 Summary 199

9.6 Semantic knowledge 200

9.6.1 Personal knowledge vs. cultural knowledge 200
9.6.2 The apple juice question 201
9.6.3 Cultural knowledge vs. semantic knowledge 203

9.7 Summary 206

Exercises
Further reading

10. Sentence meaning and formal semantics 211-250

10.1 Japanese numerals: a simple example of a compositional analysis 211

10.1.1 The system of numerals 211
10.1.2 Formal description 212
10.1.3 The general scheme 214

10.2 A small fragment of English 215

10.2.1 The grammar of the fragment 216
10.2.2 The predicate logic language PL-F: its grammar 219
10.2.3 Translating the fragment into predicate logic 222

10.3 Model-theoretic semantics 227

10.3.1 A model for PL-F 227
10.3.2 Interpretation rules for PL-F 231
10.3.3 Application to the translations of fragment sentences 234
10.3.4 Model-theoretic semantics 235

10.4 Possible-world semantics 236

10.4.1 Possible worlds 236
10.4.2 Intensions 238
10.4.3 Intensional models 240
10.4.4 Logical properties and relations 241

10.5 The scope and limits of possible-world semantics 243

10.5.1 Scope and potential 243
10.5.2 Limits 244
10.5.3 Possible-world semantics vs. mentalistic semantics 245
10.5.4 The development of possible-world semantics 246

Exercises
Further reading

References 251

Index 255

table of contents

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