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Syntax and Semantics
February 28, 2012keelin@ling.ed.ac.uk
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Plan! Syntax:
! Recap
!Trees
!Trees
!Trees
! Semantics:
! Intro
! Semantic change
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Syntax trees! Syntactic trees help us the look at the hierarchy of constituency
within a sentence
! Its called a tree, as it looks like an upside-down tree (sort of!)
!
When drawing trees, we only ever usebinarybranching! We start from the top, and work our way down, keeping
constituency in mind
! We also keep in mind allowable sequences in Phrases
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Trees glorious trees! Once we are clear on constituency, we can start drawing trees
! We will be using X Bar structure (first proposed by Chomsky in
1970)
!This is the basic structure:
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Joining phrases! We can join phrases together to form larger phrases and sentences
! Remember our constituency rules!
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Practice!Try drawing trees for:
! Sat on the mat
! went to the shop
!The cat on the floor
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Answers - sat on the mat
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Went to the shop
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The cat on the floor
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IP structure! Weve seen that the basic structure is:
!This rings true for every phrase
! We need to consider an IP: Inflectional Phrase
!This phrase contains inflection - things liketense, agreement etc
! Well see later that auxilliaries (John will havevisited Mary) and
modals (she wouldhave done that) also go in this position
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Test sentence! The cat sat on the mat
! First work out constituency:
!The cat sat there - On the mat is a constituent of sat
!The cat sat on it - the mat is a constituent of on
! [NP] [VP[PP[NP]]]
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The cat sat on the mat! IP -> [NP] [VP[PP[NP]]]
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Are you still alive?! If so, well done. Keep it up, as we have some examples to do...
! Keelin ate a cake
! I like peanuts
! Cake is delicious
!The puppy found the child
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Answers
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What about new information?! What if we want to say: The fatcat sathappilyon the uglymat
!These words are called modifiers - they modify the head of a
phrase
!They are not necessary for the sentence to be grammatical, theyre
extra
! However, we can find a place to put them
! We create new positions for them to go, by adding new X levels
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Here
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Modifiers (Adjuncts)! If we need to put in modifiers, we make a new X
!This is where extra information goes
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The fat cat sat happily on the
ugly mat
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Exercises! Keelin sat daintily on the gilded chair
!The kind-hearted boy had many girlfriends
!The huge cat slowly chased the mouse
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Answers
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The fat cat sat on the ugly mat
with pleasure!Think about where with pleasure needs to fit in! What is it a constituent of?
! Remember: replacement and movement tests
!Also, what kind of Phrase is it? with?
! PP
! The fat cat sat happily (Replace PP with Adverb)
! [NP][VP[PP][PP]]
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With pleasure
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Exercise - Trees! The magician touched the child with the wand Whats unusual
about this sentence? How might you account for that?
!
!
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The magician touched the child
with the wand
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The magician touched the child
with the wand
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Auxilliaries and Modals!Auxilliaries are found in sentences such as He willbe drunk later
! Modals are conditionals - would,could, should, might etc
!Auxilliaries and Modals are the only overt words which go in the
spec I position
! Otherwise, as we saw, it is reserved for agreement and tense
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Auxilliary
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Modal
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Exercises! Draw the trees for:
! Keelin will eat the cake
!Annabel would go to the shop
! John has gone there
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Answers - Keelin will eat the cake
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Annabel would go to the shop
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John has gone there
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Embedded sentences! One of the key aspects of human language is that we can express
long dependencies of thought and action
!Think of: She said that he said that you thought that Mary had
cheated on Ben with John
! We need a way to syntactically express sentences within sentences
!Think of the sentence The teacher believes that the student knows
the answer
! The teacher believes thatthe student knows the answer
! the student knows the answer is a complement to the verb, itsinside the VP
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Embedding ! [NP] [VP[IP]]
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Syntax trees!Trees can get MUCH more complex than weve seen
! We havent touched on the more complex syntactic theories, but
hopefully you have an idea of how to approach syntactic analysis
! Crucially, syntax is about making sense of what is allowed,
grammatically, in a language
!This involves working out what phrases are governed by others,
and laying these observations out in rules
! We use trees as a visual way to immediately see whats going on in
the syntax of a language
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Break
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Semantics! Semantics is the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes,
words, phrases and sentences
! Well be looking at lexical semantics - the meanings of words, and
the meaningful relationship between words
! Related to semantics is pragmatics, which is the study of howcontext can affect meaning
! Learning a language includes learning the meaning of individual
elements and how to combine these to make further meaningful
phrases and sentences
! We cant just make words mean whatever we want them to mean
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Book, dog, comb, run, eat!Theres nothing about these words that is matched to their meaning
!There is nothing about the word book thatmeanspaper, with
words...
! Its an arbitrary link, but a conventional arbitrary one
! We must know the conventions
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Principle of Compositionality! The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its
component parts and the manner in which they are arranged in
syntactic structure (OGrady, 284)
! So, the meaning of a sentence is over and above just the word
meanings
! Interface of syntax and semantics - syntax influences meaning
! Keelin killed John vs John killed Keelin: huge difference
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Metaphor!The use of an expression that usually expresses one concept - its
literal meaning - but is used to describe another concept, creating
an implicit comparison
! Metaphor is a hugely important part of language - we use it to
express abstract things etc! Often, the literal interpretation is so unlikely that people will use their
imagination to interpret any anomaly e.g. Walls have ears
! Here, the principle of compositionality becomes stretchy - listeners
stretch is to produce a likely meaning
! John is a snake in the grass Time is money
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Idioms!These are phrases which have a set meaning that must be learned
- the Principle of Compositionality doesnt help us in interpreting
them
!They cannot be broken down into composite meaningful parts, nor
re-worded or recombined! She put her foot in her mouth
! She threw her weight around
! Bite your tongue
! Ill give you a piece of my mind
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Semantic change/shift
! One of the most interesting aspects of semantics (in my opinion) is
tracking the changing meaning of words through time
! Even when a word is retained in a language, its meaning will often
change over time
! Often social change - people change how its used
! www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2011/04/
the_nonplussed_problem.html
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Semantic broadening! Here, words get a more general meaning than they once had
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Semantic narrowing!The opposite - where words now have a more narrow meaning
than before
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Amelioration!A word gets a more positive connotation than it had before
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Exercise(from Meyerhoff 2006)
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Exercise
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Exercise! What is the type of semantic change seen in the table above
(adapted from Meyerhoff (2006))?
! Can you think of any other terms for women which have similarly
shifted over time?
! Pejoration
! Mistress
! Buxom: kind and loving - big busted
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Exercise! Identify each of the semantic changes below
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Sense relations - Synonymy!This term refers to different words with the same meaning
(apathetic, phlegmatic, passive, sluggish, indifferent)
! So, if these terms really do mean exactly the same thing, they
should fit easily into the same environment
! An apathetic/phlegmatic/passive/sluggish/indifferent man
! Perhaps not.... Its actually very unusual to find two words which
mean precisely the same thing
!This is because true synonyms are disliked in language - if two
words have roughly equal meaning, they tend to have a distinct,
specialised use
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Synonymy!An example of perfect synonymy?
! Hes sitting on the sofa/ hes sitting on the couch
! Were very likely to be able to interpret either sentence if we know
both words
! Sofa and couch refer to the same type of concrete object, and have
many semantic properties in common
! When synonyms occur in otherwise identical sentences, the
sentences are known as lexical paraphrases (same meaning)
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Homonymy! Homonymy can be seen as the opposite of synonymy
! Here, one form is associated with more than one meaning
!This is also known as homophony (same-sound)
!
Cross (cross the street, she is cross, Jesus on the cross)! Bat (baseball, winged animal)
! Homonyms need not always be homographs (same spelling) e.g.
tale/tail
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Ambiguity! Homonymy can createlexicalambiguity (not structural)
! Prostitutes appeal to the Prime Minister
! Here, the ambiguity comes from the term appeal
!
Ill meet you by the bank! By the financial institution or the riverside?
! We must use additional information/context to decipher this
ambiguity
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Polysemy! Dont confuse this with homonymy
! Here, we have one form with different, butrelatedmeanings
!A dirty floor, a dirty trick/A dark room, a dark secret
!
Here, the relationship is one of semantic extension!The meaning of dirty (soiled, not clean) has been extended to suit
things that seem underhand, shady etc
! Bear is polysemous (to tolerate, to carry, to support), and is also
homonymous (animal, and the polysemous verb above)
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Antonymy
!This occurs when we have words which are opposite in meaning
! long-short/ young-old/male-female/small-large/dead-alive
!Two types: complementary and gradable
! Complementary antonyms: These are not gradable. There are only
two options, you cant have both at the same time
!Alive-dead, male-female, present-absent, awake-asleep
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Antonymy! Gradable antonyms: These allow us to use modified such as very,
rather, a little
! Gradable antonyms often come from sets of words on a
continuum: tiny, small, medium, large, huge, gargantuan
! big-small, hot-cold, fast-slow, happy-sad
!The meaning of adjectives here is related to the object modified:
A smallelephant is bigger than abigmouse
! Gradable antonyms: the negative of one is not synonymous with
the other e.g. not happy is not necessarily sad
! Usually, one is marked and one is unmarked: We ask how high is
the mountain, rather than how low. Here, high is unmarked
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Converses! Here, each word of a pair represents a different side of the same
relationship
!Above-below, buy-sell, husband-wife, teacher-pupil
! So, Iboughta car from someone who soldit
! Same relationship, different views
!Also sometimes known as Relational Opposites
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Hyponymy!A word is a hyponym of another word if it belongs to a general
class expressed by the other word
!Terrier, corgi, alsatian are all hyponyms of dog
! Lion, tiger, leopard are all hyponyms of cat/feline
! Seafoam, royal, turquoise are all hyponyms of blue
! Here, think of hypo - under. The hyponyms fall underthe general
class
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Hyperonymy! On the other hand, if a word expresses a more general category of
which another word is a member, then it is a hyperonym of the
other word
! Dog is hyperonym of terrier, corgi, alsatian
! Blue is hyperonym of seafoam, turquoise, royal
! Here, think of hyper over - Hyperonyms exist over the more
detailed distinctions
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Exercises! Explain the semantic ambiguity of these sentences by coming up
with two sentences which paraphrase them. Why are they
ambiguous?
(e.g. She cant bear children - she cant give birth to children/ she
cant tolerate children) - polysemy of bear
!The proprietor of the fish shop was the sole owner
!You should see her shop
! When he got the clear title to the land, it was a good deed
! It takes a good ruler to make a straight line
! He saw that gasoline can explode
! Every man loves a woman
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Answers!The proprietor of the fish shop was the sole owner(sole = fish/only
- homonymy)
!You should see her shop (shop = N/V - homonymy)
! When he got the clear title to the land, it was a good deed(deed =
action/ proof of ownership)! It takes a good ruler to make a straight line (ruler = ruler of country/
thing that helps draw straight lines - homonymy)
! He saw that gasoline can explode (can = N, modal verb -
homonymy, that = determiner/ complementiser - homonymy)
! Every man loves a woman(a woman = can be one woman, or each
man loves a different woman)
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Summary! Semantics aims to look at meaning in language
!This involves looking at word meanings and sentence meanings
! It also involves looking at how meanings can and do change over
time
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Reading for next week! http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/01/19/leave-los-
ninos-alone-the-mental-costs-of-linguistic-assimilation/
!This looks at bilingualism, which well be looking at next week (as
well as language acquisition, disruption etc)
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References! Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., and Hyams, N. (2003).An Introduction to
language. 7th edition. Massachusetts: Thomson Heinle
! Meyerhoff, M (2006). Introducing sociolinguistics. New York:
Routledge
! OGrady, W., Dobrovolshy, M., and Katamba, F. (1997)Contemporary linguistics: An introduction.Essex: Pearson
Education Ltd