What Exactly Is Meaning?

◮ Meanings are messages that get communicated by languageutterances.

◮ What are messages?

◮ Animal communication systems:

◮ ‘I’m ready to mate’, ‘Watch out (for the X)!’, ‘I’m the alphamale here’, ...

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Semantics vs. Pragmatics

Hummingbirds:

◮ Utterance: ‘raucous chatter and the shrill, metallic wing trillof 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 ...!’

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Human Language

◮ Utterance: [nob2di d2z n2P@n hir wIóawt^maj sejso]

◮ Semantics: ‘Nobody can do anything here without thespeaker’s permission to do it’.

◮ Usage1: ‘Get away from that female!’

◮ Usage2: ‘Get away from that food!’

◮ Usage3: ‘Get away from that ...!’

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The Semantics Hypothesis

◮ It’s useful to separate the purely linguistic contribution tocommunicated meaning from the theory of use.

Semantics: the theory of linguistic meaning.

Pragmatics: the (more general) theory of language use.

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How do People Communicate with Language?

◮ Make assertions.

◮ Ask questions.

◮ Issue commands.

◮ ....

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What do People Communicate with Language?

Types of Message

◮ Propositions (asserting)

(claims about the way the world is or could be; the abstractentities that are true or false depending on the way thingsreally are...)

◮ Questions (asking)

(abstract entities that are either true or false once an answeris supplied)

◮ Directives (commanding)

◮ ...

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Semantics

◮ How are messages organized?

◮ What is the structure of messages?

◮ ...

◮ What are lexical meanings?

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Semantics: The Study of Linguistic Meaning

◮ Lexical Semantics: The linguistic meanings of words.

◮ Compositional Semantics: How the linguistic meanings oflarger expressions are composed.

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What Exactly are (Lexical) Meanings?

◮ Meanings are images

(mental pictures and diagrams)

The meaning of Mona Lisa

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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’?...

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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’?

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What Exactly Is Meaning? 3

◮ Meaning as Use

The meaning of an expression is its use in the languagecommunity.

The meaning of ‘hello’ is the way ‘hello’ used in thecommunity

The meaning of ‘George W. Bush’ is the way that name isused.

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What Exactly Is Meaning? 4

◮ Meaning as Reference (denotation):

The meaning of an expression is the thing it denotes (itsdenotation).

The denotation of the name Barack Obama is that guy inthe White House.

The denotation of I, said by some person x is simply x.

The denotation of the noun republican is the set of peoplewho are registered as members of the Republican Party.

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What’s Wrong with this Theory?

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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’.

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What Exactly Is Meaning? 5

◮ Meaning as Sense (Frege 1892)

The meaning of an expression is its sense, an abstract objectthat determines its reference.

An abstraction over the concepts of the members of a givenlanguage community.

Often formalized as functions that pick out the appropriatereference.

Each linguistic expression has both a sense and a reference.

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The meaning (sense) of the president =

[USA,1789] → George Washington

[USA,1795] → George Washington

. . .

[USA,1994] → Bill Clinton

. . .

[USA,2011] → Barack H. Obama

. . .

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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

. . .

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Systematic Relations among Word Meanings

(Lexical Senses)

Synonymy

Homophony

Hyponymy/Hypernymy

Antonymy

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Synonymy

◮ Synonym: ‘A word having the same or nearly the samemeaning as another word or other words in a language.’

◮ automobile/car, H20/water, cat/feline,...

◮ muskmelon/cantelope?

◮ Are there any true synonyms?

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Homophony:

◮ Two semantically unrelated words are homophones if theyare (accidentally) pronounced the same:

too and two

lead (the metal) and led (the past tense)

bank1 (‘sloped embankment’) andbank2 (‘financial institution’)

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Polysemy:

◮ A single word is polysemous if it has several meanings thatare 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 similarinstitution’) [blood bank; egg bank; sperm bank]

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Hyponymy (literally ‘under-name’)

◮ Hyponymy is the relation between a more general and morespecific 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 (alsocalled hypernym ‘above-name’).

vehicle/car, plant/flower/tulip,..

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◮ Antonymy

Complementary antonyms: alive/dead,mortal/immortal, married/unmarried...

Gradable antonyms: tall/short, big/little,...

Relational antonyms (converses): parent/child,teacher/student, buy/sell...

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Generally speaking, some adjectives are gradable while othersare not.

Gradable properties can be said to exist to a degree (unlikecomplementary properties.

The simplest test for gradable adjectives is whether you canmodify the word with very.

◮ Gradable: very large/very small; very sad/very happy; verywet/very dry

◮ Nongradable: *very first/*very last; *very alive/*very dead;*very single/*very married.

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Other Semantic Relations

Metaphor

“a figure of speech in which a term is transferred from theobject it ordinarily designates to an object it may designateonly 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 abitch.

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Metonymy and Synecdoche

Metonymy is “a figure of speech in which an attribute orcommonly associated feature is used to name or designatesomething.”

The White House says...; the law referring to a policeman.

Synecdoche is “a figure of speech by which a more inclusiveterm is used for a less inclusive one, or vice versa.”

All hands on deck,

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The Many Uses of the SF Chronicle

I bought the SF Chronicle this morning. (a copy of thenewspaper)

Murdoch is trying to buy the SF Chronicle. (thenewspaper-publishing company)

The SF Chronicle endorsed Obama. (the newspaper’seditorial staff)

Lee is parked on 33rd St. (Lee’s car)

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