1 Some Fundamental Concepts for Semantics
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Semantics and Pragmatics
Semantics and Pragmatics Christopher Gauker Semantics deals with the literal meaning of sentences. Pragmatics deals with what speakers mean by their utterances of sentences over and above what those sentences literally mean. However, it is not always clear where to draw the line. Natural languages contain many expressions that may be thought of both as contributing to literal meaning and as devices by which speakers signal what they mean. After characterizing the aims of semantics and pragmatics, this chapter will set out the issues concerning such devices and will propose a way of dividing the labor between semantics and pragmatics. Disagreements about the purview of semantics and pragmatics often concern expressions of which we may say that their interpretation somehow depends on the context in which they are used. Thus: • The interpretation of a sentence containing a demonstrative, as in “This is nice”, depends on a contextually-determined reference of the demonstrative. • The interpretation of a quantified sentence, such as “Everyone is present”, depends on a contextually-determined domain of discourse. • The interpretation of a sentence containing a gradable adjective, as in “Dumbo is small”, depends on a contextually-determined standard (Kennedy 2007). • The interpretation of a sentence containing an incomplete predicate, as in “Tipper is ready”, may depend on a contextually-determined completion. Semantics and Pragmatics 8/4/10 Page 2 • The interpretation of a sentence containing a discourse particle such as “too”, as in “Dennis is having dinner in London tonight too”, may depend on a contextually determined set of background propositions (Gauker 2008a). • The interpretation of a sentence employing metonymy, such as “The ham sandwich wants his check”, depends on a contextually-determined relation of reference-shifting. -
Chapter Five Meaning
1. The Study of Meaning Semantics: The meaning of words: Lexical semantics Chapter Five The meaning of sentences: Propositional meaning, compositional meaning Meaning Linguistic semantics vs. Logical Meaning semantics/philosophical semantics Pragmatics: The meaning of utterances 1 2 2. Semantic Meaning Logicians and philosophers have tended to concentrate on a restricted range of sentences (typically, statements, or ‘propositions’) within Semantics is the study of meaning in language. a single language. Meaning has been studied for thousands of The linguistic approach aims to study the years by philosophers, logicians and linguists. properties of meaning in a systematic and E.g. Plato & Aristotle. objective way, with reference to as wide a range of utterances and languages as possible, ∴ broader in scope. 3 4 3. The meaning of meaning Geoffrey Leech (1974, 1981). Semantics: The 3. The meaning of meaning Study of Meaning. Seven types of meaning: C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (1923). The Meaning of Meaning. Conceptual meaning John means to write. Connotative meaning A green light means to go. Social meaning Health means everything. Associative Affective meaning His look was full of meaning. Meaning What is the meaning of life? Reflected and meaning What does ‘capitalist’ mean to you? Collocative meaning What does ‘cornea’ mean? Thematic meaning 5 6 1 3.2 Connotative meaning 3.1 Conceptual meaning The communicative value an expression has by ‘ ’ ‘ ’ Also called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning. virtue of what it refers to, over and above its Refers to logical, cognitive or denotative purely conceptual content. content. A multitude of additional, non-criterial Concerned with the relationship between a properties, including not only physical word and the thing it denotes, or refers to. -
Situation Theory: a Survey
ABSTRACT SITUATION THEORY: A SURVEY Situation semantics was developed as an alternative to possible-worlds semantics. While possible-worlds semantics defines the informational content of sentences in terms of complete descriptions of the way the world is or might be, situation semantics defines the informational content of sentences in terms of partial worlds called situations. Situation theory is a novel informational ontology developed to give situation semantics a rigorous mathematical foundation. In reviewing the literature, we observed that although there are a few texts introducing situation theory in varying levels of detail and systematicity, there has not yet been published, until now, a general survey of the situation-theory literature that might introduce and guide future scholars. We note that a similar, if perhaps less-pressing need exists for a survey of the situation-semantics literature, but regret that we must leave such a survey for others. Jacob Ian Lee December 2011 SITUATION THEORY: A SURVEY by Jacob Ian lee A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science in the College of Science and Mathematics California State University, Fresno December 2011 © 2011 Jacob Ian Lee APPROVED For the Department of Computer Science: We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree. Jacob Ian Lee Thesis Author Todd Wilson (Chair) Computer Science Shigeko Seki Computer Science Shih-Hsi Liu Computer Science For the University Graduate Committee: Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship. -
1 Reference 1. the Phenomenon Of
1 Reference 1. The phenomenon of reference In a paper evaluating animal communication systems, Hockett and Altmann (1968) presented a list of what they found to be the distinctive characteristics which, collectively, define what it is to be a human language. Among the characteristics is the phenomenon of "aboutness", that is, in using a human language we talk about things that are external to ourselves. This not only includes things that we find in our immediate environment, but also things that are displaced in time and space. For example, at this moment I can just as easily talk about Tahiti or the planet Pluto, neither of which are in my immediate environment nor ever have been, as I can about this telephone before me or the computer I am using at this moment. Temporal displacement is similar: it would seem I can as easily talk about Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar, neither a contemporary of mine, as I can of former president Bill Clinton, or my good friend John, who are contemporaries of mine. This notion of aboutness is, intuitively, lacking in some contrasting instances. For example, it is easy to think that animal communication systems lack this characteristic—that the mating call of the male cardinal may be caused by a certain biological urge, and may serve as a signal that attracts mates, but the call itself is (putatively) not about either of those things. Or, consider an example from human behavior. I hit my thumb with a hammer while attempting to drive in a nail. I say, "Ouch!" In so doing I am saying this because of the pain, and I am communicating to anyone within earshot that I am in pain, but the word ouch itself is not about the pain I feel. -
Minimal Pronouns1
1 Minimal Pronouns1 Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Bound Variable Pronouns Angelika Kratzer University of Massachusetts at Amherst June 2006 Abstract The paper challenges the widely accepted belief that the relation between a bound variable pronoun and its antecedent is not necessarily submitted to locality constraints. It argues that the locality constraints for bound variable pronouns that are not explicitly marked as such are often hard to detect because of (a) alternative strategies that produce the illusion of true bound variable interpretations and (b) language specific spell-out noise that obscures the presence of agreement chains. To identify and control for those interfering factors, the paper focuses on ‘fake indexicals’, 1st or 2nd person pronouns with bound variable interpretations. Following up on Kratzer (1998), I argue that (non-logophoric) fake indexicals are born with an incomplete set of features and acquire the remaining features via chains of local agreement relations established in the syntax. If fake indexicals are born with an incomplete set of features, we need a principled account of what those features are. The paper derives such an account from a semantic theory of pronominal features that is in line with contemporary typological work on possible pronominal paradigms. Keywords: agreement, bound variable pronouns, fake indexicals, meaning of pronominal features, pronominal ambiguity, typologogy of pronouns. 1 . I received much appreciated feedback from audiences in Paris (CSSP, September 2005), at UC Santa Cruz (November 2005), the University of Saarbrücken (workshop on DPs and QPs, December 2005), the University of Tokyo (SALT XIII, March 2006), and the University of Tromsø (workshop on decomposition, May 2006). -
A Prolegomenon to Situation Semantics
A PROLEGOMENON TO SITUATION SEMANTICS David J. Israel Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Cambridge, MA 02238 Situation Semantics (yet?). ABSTRACT So what is there? Besides a few published An attempt is made to prepare Computational papers, each of them containing at least one Linguistics for Situation Semantics. position since abandoned~ there is a book ~ Attitudes literally on the very I INTRODUCTION verge of publication. This contains the philosophlcal/theoretlcal background of the program The editors of the AI Journal recently hit upon - The Big Picture. It also contains a very brief the nice notion of correspondents' columns. The treatment of a very simple fragment of ALIASS. And basic idea was to solicit experts in various what, the reader may well ask is ALIASS? An fields, both within and outside of Artificial Artificial Language for lliustratlng Aspects of Intelligence, to provide "guidance to important, ~Ituation ~emantlcs, that's what. Moreover there interesting current literature" in their fields. is in the works a ceiiaboratlve effort, to be For Philosophy, they made the happy choice of Dan called Situations andS. m This will contain Dennett; for natural language processing, the a "Fragment of Situation Semantics", a treatment of equally happy choice of Barbara Grosz. Each has so an extended fra~ent of ~. Last, for the far contributed one column, and these early moment, but not least, is a second book by Barwise contributions overlap in one, and as it happens, and Perry, ~ ~, which will include only one, particular; to wit: Situation~manties. a treatment of an even more extended fragment of Witness Dennett: English, together with a self-contalned treatment of the technical, mathematical background. -
233 Meaning and the Second Language Learner Jane Nkechi
Meaning and the Second Language Learner Jane Nkechi Ifechelobi* Abstract Meaning is about the most elusive and controversial phenomenon in the study of language .The ambiguous nature of meaning is manifest in the fact that in almost any language, one expression can be subject to a number of interpretations depending on the speaker, the hearer and the situation where the expression is used. Meanings are ultimately determined not by words but by people [Hybels and Weaver26]. Most often the second language learner seeks to interpret word meaning without reference to the person who uses it and the community in which it is used. The concern of this paper is to bring out the complexity between meaning and the second language learner, because meaning lies on the interpreter and not on the user of the language. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ujah.v13i1.13 Introduction Language is a means of communication but what is normally conveyed in language use is not words and sentences but a message. The implication is that language cannot stand on its own apart from the function of conveying messages. This suggests that meaning exists elsewhere than in language. In any language use, the more important and more valuable object is the message; language is only secondary. In the study of language one is concerned more with the expression of meanings than with meaning itself. However the analysis of meaning is the message enveloped in the linguistic form. It is obvious that there is an intrinsic connection between meaning and communication such that it is impossible to account for the former except in terms of the latter. -
Ogden and Richards' the Meaning of Meaning and Early Analytic
Ogden and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning and early analytic philosophy. James McElvenny [email protected] This is the green open access copy of my paper in Language Sciences (2014, 41.212-221). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.10.001 This version silently corrects a few small errors in the published paper. Abstract C.K. Ogden (1889–1957) and I.A. Richards’ (1893–1979) The Meaning of Meaning is widely recognised as a classic text of early twentieth-century linguistic semantics and semiotics, but less well known are its links to the ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), one of the foundational doctrines of analytic philosophy. In this paper a detailed comparison of The Meaning of Meaning and logical atomism is made, in which several key similarities between the two theories in subject matter and approach are identified: both attempt to describe meaning in terms of the latest psychological doctrines and both pursue a normative program aimed at rectifying the perceived deficiencies of language. But there are also a number of differences between the theories. Ogden and Richards – most probably inspired by Victoria Lady Welby (1837–1912) – offered a pragmatically oriented account of ordinary language, while Russell sought a ‘logically perfect language’ beyond interpretation, and rejected the work of Welby and her allies. These differences contributed significantly to Russell’s largely negative opinion of The Meaning of Meaning. Despite this, several ideas pioneered in The Meaning of Meaning re-appear in Russell’s later writings. The Meaning of Meaning, it would seem, not only drew inspiration from Russell’s philosophy but may have also contributed to its further development. -
The Treatment of Tense in Situation Semantics 1
The Treatment of Tense in Situation Semantics 1 Kiyong Lee In this paper, the four classical issues involving definite or dynamic in terpretations of tense are first reviewed, as discussed in Hinrichs (1987). Then, an attempt is made to solve them in a situation-theoretic frame work a la Barwise (1989) with the notions of described, discourse, resou rce or background situations. For semantic composition, Yoo and Lee's (1988) equation solving approach is adopted to treat Hinrichs's tensed sen tences. Finally, described and discourse situations are differentiated by the notions of temporal localization, connectedness, and dynamicity to state cons-traints on discourse situations and then properly to induce the dy namic or rational interpretation of a discourse. O. Introduction In this paper, I claim that Nerbonne's (1983) or Hinrichs's (1987) Rei chenbachian or indexical approach to the interpretation of temporal expres sions 2 is a particular application of Barwise and Perry's (1983) or Bar wise's (1989) Situation Theory to the model-theoretic semantics of tempo rally constrained natural language. In order to account for definite interpre tations of tense, as illustrated by 'Sam forgot to turn off the stove,' for in- 1 The work presented here was partially supported by a 1986 Korea University Faculty Research Grant. The preliminary versions were presented at the First Kyung Hee International Conference on Linguistics, summer 1989, and at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Febru ary 14, 1990. I am grateful to those who have made comments on these presenta tions and helped improve the paper, especially Ivan Sag, Suson Yoo, John Nerbonne, and Stanley Peters. -
The Notion of 'Being Informative' & the Praxiological- Information Perspective on Language
tripleC 7(2): 214-227, 2009 ISSN 1726-670X http://www.triple-c.at The notion of 'being informative' & the praxiological- information perspective on language Antonio Florio ILCLI (Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information), University of Basque Country, UPV-EHU, Donostia. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: After a concise introduction on the analysis of truth and meaning in philosophy of language, two notions of information are grasped by the analysis of Situation Semantics and Situation Theory. The first is that of correlation, the second that of constraint; the latter is reducible to the former. More than that, the phenomenon of “alethic nature of information” is highlighted and the notion of “being informative” is pointed out. The difference between a meaning-oriented and an informational-oriented perspective of language is marked. Messages are recognized as being the atomic constituents of the informational perspective of language; the architecture of language is shown; and a praxiological- information perspective on the study of language is outlined. Keywords: Correspondence, correlation, Situation Semantics, Situation Theory, tokens, types, infons, data symbols, codes, message Acknowledgement: I am grateful to the professor J. M. Larrazabal for the invitation to discuss a preliminary draft of this paper in an open seminar at ILCLI in October 2008 and for the feedback I received in that occasion. I‟m grateful to the professor F. Salto for the invitation to “The First International Meeting of Experts in Information”, where I presented a preliminary draft of this paper, and for the feedback that I received after that meeting. ituation Semantics is a theory of natural extensional model theory and possible language and, following the classical world semantics...” (Perry, 1999, p. -
Embodiment, Language and Mimesis Zlatev, Jordan
Embodiment, language and mimesis Zlatev, Jordan Published in: Body, Language, Mind. Vol 1: Embodiment 2007 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Zlatev, J. (2007). Embodiment, language and mimesis. In T. Ziemke, J. Zlatev, & R. Franck (Eds.), Body, Language, Mind. Vol 1: Embodiment (pp. 297-337). Mouton de Gruyter. Total number of authors: 1 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Embodiment, Language, and Mimesis Jordan Zlatev For years now, leading representatives of theoretical linguistics have been arguing that humans, being gov- erned by a blind ‘language instinct’, can be exhaus- tively described in physico-biological terms. … [T]his conception has been shown to be fundamentally false. -
Situation Semantics and Machine Translation
SITUATION SEMANTICS AND MACHINE TRANSLATION. C.J. Rupp CCL, UMIST P.O. Box 88 Manchester M60 1QD Introduction Situation Semantics: The Basics. Situation Semantics is one of the most Situation Semantics is an informational recent and controversial theories in approach to formal semantics. The formal semantics. Machine Translation philosophical basis of this theory is laid (MT) is a highly complex application out in Barwise and Perry's Situations domain, in which research is expensive and Attitudes (1983) (henceforth B&P). of both time and resources. On the Most of the structure of the theory can surface, the space for interaction be seen as arising out of three basic between these two fields would seem concepts. fairly limited, and in practice the the application of formal semantics in MT Attunement: has been very limited, a notable ... an organism must be attuned to exception being the Rosetta project similarities between situations, what (Landsbergen 1982, 1987). The abstract we have called uniformities, and to translation problem however remains relationships that obtain between and any application must be based on these uniformities... (B&P plO) some formalisation of the problem. Constraints: The purpose of this paper is demonstrate that the enriched ... systematic relations of a special theoretical vocabulary of Situation sort between different types of Semantics offers a more intuitive situation .... These systematic characterisation of the translation constraints are what allow one process, than was .possible using more situation to contain information traditional semanuc theories. This about another. Attunement to these demonstration will take the form of a constraints is what allows an agent to formalisation of the most commonly used pick up information from one method for MT in terms of Situation situation about another.