2. SEMANTICS is the study
of MEANING in LANGUAGE
◦ SPEAKER MEANING is what a
speaker means (i.e. intends to convey)
◦ SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD
MEANING) is what a sentence (or word)
means, i.e. what it counts as the
equivalent of in the language
concerned
3. A THEORY is a precisely specified, coherent, and
economical frame-work of interdependent
statements and definitions, constructed so that
as large a number as possible of particular basic
facts can either be seen to follow from it or be
describable in terms of it.
A THEORY OF LANGUAGE includes:
Semantics
Syntax
Lexis
Phonology
4. UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one person,
before and after which there is silence on the
part of that person. It is language in use.
SENTENCES is neither a physical event nor a
physical object. It is an IDEAL string of words put
together by the grammatical rules of a language.
PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the
utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs.
6. By means of REFERENCE a speaker indicates
which things in the world (including persons)
are being talked about.
The SENSE of an expression is its place in a
system of semantic relationships with other
expressions in the language.
7. A REFERRING EXPRESSION is any expression
used in an utterance to refer to something or
someone (or a clearly delimited collection of
things or people), i.e. used with a particular
referent in mind.
8. SEMANTIC analysis of simple declarative
sentences: REFFERING EXPRESSIONS +
PREDICATES.
A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of
words) which can function as the predicator
of a sentence.
2 SEMANTIC ROLES
REFERRING EXPRESSIONS -- ARGUMENT
PREDICATES -- PREDICATOR
9. PREDICATOR: part of a sentence that does
NOT belong to a referring expression BUT
does provide meaning, e.g.:
◦ Adjectives
◦ Verbs
◦ Prepositions
◦ Nouns
Conjunctions & articles are NEVER predicators.
The DEGREE of a predicate is a number
indicating the number of arguments it is
normally understood to have in simple
sentences (one-place predicate, two-place
predicate…)
10. A GENERIC SENTENCE is a sentence in which
some statement is made about a whole
unrestricted class of individuals, as opposed
to any particular individual.
UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance as
the particular world, real or imaginary (or part
real, part imaginary), that the speaker
assumes he is talking about at the time.
11. A DEICTIC word is one which takes some
element of its meaning from the context or
situation of the utterance in which it is used.
The CONTEXT of an utterance is a small
subpart of the universe of discourse shared
by speaker and hearer, and includes facts
about the topic of the conversation in which
the utterance occurs, and also facts about the
situation in which the conversation itself
takes place.
12. REFERENCE
◦ CONSTANT REFERENCE
◦ VARIABLE REFERENCE
SENSE
The EXTENSION of a one-place predicate is the set of
all individuals to (partial) which that predicate can
truthfully be applied.
A PROTOTYPE of a predicate is an object which is
held to be very TYPICAL of the kind of object which
can be referred to by an expression containing the
predicate (i.e. the prototype of a predicate = the most
typical member of the extension of a predicate.
13. The REFERENT of a referring expression is the
thing picked out by the use of that expression on
a particular occasion of utterance.
The EXTENSION of a predicate is the complete set
of all things which could potentially (i.e. in any
possible utterance) be the referent of a referring
expression whose head constituent is that
predicate.
A PROTOTYPE of a predicate is a typical member
of its extension.
14. The SENSE of an expression is its indispensable hard
core of meaning.
◦ An ANALYTIC sentence is one that is necessarily TRUE, as a
result of the senses of the words in it.
◦ A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but
may be either true or false, depending on the way the world
is.
◦ A CONTRADICTION is a sentence that is necessarily FALSE,
as a result of the senses of the words in it (a contradiction
is in a way the opposite of an analytic sentence).
◦ The STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL
characteristics or features of things to which the predicate
may be applied.
15. SYNONYMY is the relationship between two
predicates that have the same sense.
Synonymy is a relation between predicates,
and not between words (i.e. word forms)
A sentence which expresses the same
proposition as another sentence is a
PARAPHRASE of that sentence (assuming the
same referents for any referring expressions
involved).
17. BINARY ANTONYMS are predicates which
come in pairs and between them exhaust all
the relevant possibilities.
Two predicates are GRADABLE ANTONYMS if
they are at opposite ends of a continuous
scale of values.
A word or sentence is AMBIGUOUS when it
has more than one sense.
18. A case of HOMONYMY is one of an ambiguous
word whose different senses are far apart from
each other and not related to each other.
A case of POLYSEMY is one where a word has
several very closely related senses.
HYPONYMY is a sense relation between
predicates such that the meaning of one
predicate is included in the meaning of the other.
◦ SYNONYMY: SYMMETRICAL HYPONYMY
19. A sentence which is ambiguous because its
words relate to each other in different ways,
even though none of the individual words are
ambiguous, is STRUCTURALLY (or
GRAMMATICALLY) AMBIGUOUS.
Definition Any ambiguity resulting from the
ambiguity of a word is a LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
20. Hurdford, J et al. (2007)
Semantics. A Coursebook.
U.K.: CUP. Units 1 to 11
