What is semantics?
• Semantics is the study of the relation between form and
meaning
– Basic observation: language relates physical phenomena (acoustic
blast we produce when we speak, chalk marks on the board, etc.)
to meanings
– How do we get from certain brute physical facts to meanings?
– How do we get from physics to semantics?
• The crucial question of linguistics:
How are form and meaning systematically related in an
adequate grammar of natural language?
The form-meaning link
in linguistics phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Phonetics studies the physical side of linguistic utterances—the
articulation and perception of speech sounds (articulatory, acoustic and
auditory).
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Phonology is the study of the sound patterns of human language.
– Speech sounds as physical entities may be infinitely varied, but when they function as
elements in a given language, as phonological units, they are highly constrained.
– Native speakers of any language intuitively know which sequences of speech sounds
are words or could be words in their language.
English English-like Not English-like Czech tongue twister
blue grue prst strc prst skrz krk
– What are the smallest meaning distinguishing units (= phonemes) in a given
language? Example: cat - sat - bat - mat
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Morphology is the study of the structure of words and the smallest meaning bearing
units and how they combine into words:
– allowable combinations of morphemes: un-able, to un-do, *un-house
– new word formation: to pulver-ize, to woman-ize, to google
Now this lesson is concerned mainly with the difference between semantics and pragmatics
.
.
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Syntax is the study of the formation of sentences, how words are
combined to larger units than words, to phrases and sentences that are
well-formed strings in a given language
*portrait Rembrandt painted that a …
A portrait that Rembrandt painted …
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Semantics is the study of meaning expressed by elements of any language, characterizable
as a symbolic system.
It is the goal of linguistic semantics to describe the meaning of linguistic elements and to
study the principles which allow (and exclude) the assignment of meaning to
combinations of these elements. A complete and an adequate semantic theory
– characterizes the systematic meaning relations between words and sentences of a
language, and
– provides an account of the relations between linguistic expressions and the things
that they can be used to talk about (De Swart 1998, p.2).
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Semantics is the study of meaning expressed by elements of any language, characterizable as
a symbolic system.
It is the goal of linguistic semantics to describe the meaning of linguistic elements and to
study the principles which allow (and exclude) the assignment of meaning to
combinations of these elements. A complete and an adequate semantic theory
– characterizes the systematic meaning relations between words and sentences
of a language, and
– provides an account of the relations between linguistic expressions and the things
that they can be used to talk about (De Swart 1998, p.2).
Question: How is a meaningful sentence built up from its meaningful parts all the
way down to individual words?
Dog bites man ordinary, expected event, barely something worthwhile reporting
Man bites dog an unusual, infrequent event, which is more likely to be reported
– Same words man, dog, bites with the same meaning
– different structure leads to a different meaning of a whole sentence
– structure overtly manifested in the differences in word order indicates how man and
dog are related to the verb bites
• Conclusion:
The meaning of a complex expression is determined by its structure and the
meanings of its constituents—once we fix what the parts mean and how they are put
together we have no more leeway regarding the meaning of the whole. This is the
PRINCIPLE OF COMPOSITIONALITY (Frege’s Principle), a fundamental
presupposition of most contemporary work in semantics.
We cannot study meaning without structure.
We cannot study meaning without structure.
There are certain aspects of structure (syntax, morphology) that may be fruitfully
studied without reference to meaning (semantics). However, if we are interested
in language as a means of communication, we do not want to study syntax for its
own sake (De Swart 1998, p.9-10).
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
• The simplest cases of meaning are those in which the speaker says a sentence and means
exactly and literally what he says.
It’s warm in here.
• More complicated cases: the speaker utters a sentence, means what he says, but also
means something more. The literal meaning of a sentence and what the speaker intends
to convey when he uses it, utters it, for example, then come apart in various ways
It’s warm in here.
(i) Sentence (literal) meaning: assertion about temperature
(ii) Speaker’s intended meaning or utterance meaning (one among many): command
Open the window, please!
• Even more complicated case: An American soldier example (Searle 1965 “What
is a speech act?”)
“Suppose that I am an American soldier in the Second World War and that I am captured by
Italian troops. And suppose also that I wish to get these troops to believe that I am a
German officer in order to get them to release me. (…) But let us suppose I don’t know
enough German or Italian to do that. (…) they don’t know enough German (…) Let us
suppose I know only one line of German, which I remember from a poem I had to memorize
in a high school German course. Therefore I, a captured American, address my Italian
captors with the following sentence: Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühen?”
This is a line from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,
which is translated as ‘Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees bloom?’
“I want my captors to be deceived into thinking that what I mean is ‘I am a German officer’ ,
but part of what is involved in the deception is getting them to think that that is what the
words which I utter mean in German.”
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühen?
(i) Sentence meaning: Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees bloom?
(ii) Speaker’s intended meaning/ utterance meaning: I am a German officer.
However, this example does not mean that we can use ANY string of words with
ANY intended meaning. Wittgenstein (in Philosophical Investigations) mentions
that we cannot say it’s cold here and mean it’s warm here.
“The reason we are unable to do this is that what we can mean is a function of
what we are saying. Meaning is more than a matter of intention, it is also a matter
of convention.” (Searle 1965)
• The crucial question of pragmatics:
How is the sentence meaning related to speaker’s intended meaning?
phonetics phonology morphology syntax semantics pragmatics
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SOUNDS MEANING
Semantics studies literal, context-independent meaning, the constant meaning that
is associated with a linguistic expression in all of its occurrences
Pragmatics is the study of situated uses of language, the study of language in
relation to the users of language, the study of linguistic communication as a
social activity
Pragmatics is also concerned with how we DO things with words
– There are certain utterances that change facts in the world
I hereby declare you husband and wife.
vs. #I hereby scramble and fry you.
(This is not how you get your eggs cooked)
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الجمعة سبتمبر 19, 2014 5:12 am من طرف هيثم مومني
