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What Exactly Is Meaning?

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What Exactly Is Meaning? What Exactly Is Meaning? ◮ Meanings are messages that get communicated by language utterances. ◮ What are messages? ◮ Animal communication systems: ◮ ‘I’m ready to mate’, ‘Watch out (for the X)!’, ‘I’m the alpha male here’, ... 1 / 28 Semantics vs. Pragmatics Hummingbirds: ◮ Utterance: ‘raucous chatter and the shrill, metallic wing trill of adult males.’ (National Geographic) ◮ Semantics: ‘I’m the alpha male here’ ◮ Usage1: ‘Get away from that female!’ ◮ Usage2: ‘Get away from that food!’ ◮ Usage3: ‘Get away from that ...!’ 2 / 28 Human Language ◮ Utterance: [nob2di d2z n2P@n hir wIóawt^maj sejso] ◮ Semantics: ‘Nobody can do anything here without the speaker’s permission to do it’. ◮ Usage1: ‘Get away from that female!’ ◮ Usage2: ‘Get away from that food!’ ◮ Usage3: ‘Get away from that ...!’ 3 / 28 The Semantics Hypothesis ◮ It’s useful to separate the purely linguistic contribution to communicated meaning from the theory of use. Semantics: the theory of linguistic meaning. Pragmatics: the (more general) theory of language use. 4 / 28 How do People Communicate with Language? ◮ Make assertions. ◮ Ask questions. ◮ Issue commands. ◮ .... 5 / 28 What do People Communicate with Language? Types of Message ◮ Propositions (asserting) (claims about the way the world is or could be; the abstract entities that are true or false depending on the way things really are...) ◮ Questions (asking) (abstract entities that are either true or false once an answer is supplied) ◮ Directives (commanding) ◮ ... 6 / 28 Semantics ◮ How are messages organized? ◮ What is the structure of messages? ◮ ... ◮ What are lexical meanings? 7 / 28 Semantics: The Study of Linguistic Meaning ◮ Lexical Semantics: The linguistic meanings of words. ◮ Compositional Semantics: How the linguistic meanings of larger expressions are composed. 8 / 28 What Exactly are (Lexical) Meanings? ◮ Meanings are images (mental pictures and diagrams) The meaning of Mona Lisa 9 / 28 What’s Wrong with Images? We probably often have different images, e.g.... ‘dog’, ‘cat’... The meaning of ‘triangle’? The meaning of ‘kick’? The meaning of ‘only’?, ‘hello’?, ‘not’, ‘the’?... 10 / 28 What Exactly Is Meaning? 2 ◮ Meanings are concepts (mentally represented categories). But what are concepts, exactly? Whatever they are, they are subjective. (meanings have to be something more objective) Prototype effects? The meaning of ‘bird’? The meaning of ‘furniture’? 11 / 28 What Exactly Is Meaning? 3 ◮ Meaning as Use The meaning of an expression is its use in the language community. The meaning of ‘hello’ is the way ‘hello’ used in the community The meaning of ‘George W. Bush’ is the way that name is used. 12 / 28 What Exactly Is Meaning? 4 ◮ Meaning as Reference (denotation): The meaning of an expression is the thing it denotes (its denotation). The denotation of the name Barack Obama is that guy in the White House. The denotation of I, said by some person x is simply x. The denotation of the noun republican is the set of people who are registered as members of the Republican Party. 13 / 28 What’s Wrong with this Theory? 14 / 28 What’s Wrong with this Theory? What’s the denotation of the expression the president? ‘The president is the president’. ‘Barack Obama is Barack Obama’. ‘Barack Obama is the president’. 15 / 28 What Exactly Is Meaning? 5 ◮ Meaning as Sense (Frege 1892) The meaning of an expression is its sense, an abstract object that determines its reference. An abstraction over the concepts of the members of a given language community. Often formalized as functions that pick out the appropriate reference. Each linguistic expression has both a sense and a reference. 16 / 28 The meaning (sense) of the president = → [USA,1789] George Washington [USA,1795] → George Washington . → [USA,1994] Bill Clinton . [USA,2011] → Barack H. Obama . 17 / 28 The meaning (sense) of the name Barack Obama = → [USA,1789] Barack H. Obama [USA,1795] → Barack H. Obama . → [USA,1994] Barack H. Obama . [USA,2011] → Barack H. Obama . 18 / 28 Systematic Relations among Word Meanings (Lexical Senses) Synonymy Homophony Hyponymy/Hypernymy Antonymy 19 / 28 Synonymy ◮ Synonym: ‘A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language.’ ◮ automobile/car, H20/water, cat/feline,... ◮ muskmelon/cantelope? ◮ Are there any true synonyms? 20 / 28 Homophony: ◮ Two semantically unrelated words are homophones if they are (accidentally) pronounced the same: too and two lead (the metal) and led (the past tense) bank1 (‘sloped embankment’) and bank2 (‘financial institution’) 21 / 28 Polysemy: ◮ A single word is polysemous if it has several meanings that are related in some way: pig (the animal) and pig (‘sloppy person’) pool (of water on the ground) and (swimming) pool bank2 (‘financial institution’) and bank3 (‘a similar institution’) [blood bank; egg bank; sperm bank] 22 / 28 Hyponymy (literally ‘under-name’) ◮ Hyponymy is the relation between a more general and more specific word, a relation of inclusion. If you can say all Xs are also Ys then this means X is a hyponym of Y The opposite relation is that Y is a superordinate of X (also called hypernym ‘above-name’). vehicle/car, plant/flower/tulip,.. 23 / 28 ◮ Antonymy Complementary antonyms: alive/dead, mortal/immortal, married/unmarried... Gradable antonyms: tall/short, big/little,... Relational antonyms (converses): parent/child, teacher/student, buy/sell... 24 / 28 Generally speaking, some adjectives are gradable while others are not. Gradable properties can be said to exist to a degree (unlike complementary properties. The simplest test for gradable adjectives is whether you can modify the word with very. ◮ Gradable: very large/very small; very sad/very happy; very wet/very dry ◮ Nongradable: *very first/*very last; *very alive/*very dead; *very single/*very married. 25 / 28 Other Semantic Relations Metaphor “a figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by implicit comparison or analogy.” the twilight of her career He’s a leech Kim’s a chicken, a goose, a cow, a dog, a cat, a crab, or a bitch. 26 / 28 Metonymy and Synecdoche Metonymy is “a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something.” The White House says...; the law referring to a policeman. Synecdoche is “a figure of speech by which a more inclusive term is used for a less inclusive one, or vice versa.” All hands on deck, 27 / 28 The Many Uses of the SF Chronicle I bought the SF Chronicle this morning. (a copy of the newspaper) Murdoch is trying to buy the SF Chronicle. (the newspaper-publishing company) The SF Chronicle endorsed Obama. (the newspaper’s editorial staff) Lee is parked on 33rd St. (Lee’s car) 28 / 28.
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