Chapter5Meaning-S语言学.

1、Chapter Five MeaningSection One the Referential TheoryQ1. What is semantics?Q2. What is the referential theory?SemanticsThe subject concerning the study of meaning is called SEMANTICS. More specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular.Mea

2、ning has always been a central topic in human scholarship, thoughthe term “ semantics ” has only a history of a little over a hundred years. There were discussions of meaning in the works of the Greek philosopher Plato as early as in the fifth century before Christ. In China, Lao Zi had discussed si

3、milar questions even earlier. The fact that over the years numerous dictionaries have been produced with a view to explaining the meaning of words also bears witness to its long tradition. Nevertheless, semantics remains the least known area in linguistics, compared with phonetics, phonology, morpho

4、logy and syntax.Meanings of “ meaning ”One difficulty in the study of meaning is that the word“ meaning ” ihas different meanings. In their book The Meaning of Meaning written in 1923, C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards presented a “ representative list of the main definitions which reputable students o

5、f meaning have favored ”(p. 186).There are 16 major categories of them, with sub-categories all together, numbering 22.The referential theoryThe theory of meaning, which relates the meaning of a word to the thing, it refers to, or stands for, is known as the referential theory. This is a very popula

6、r theory. It is generally possible, as we have shown in the previous section, to explain the meaning of a word by pointing to the thing it refers to.In the case of proper nouns and definite noun phrases, this s especially trues.When we say “ The most influential linguist Noam Chomsky teaches at MIT”

7、we do use “ themost influential linguist a”nd “ NoamChomsky ” to mean a particular person, and“ MIT” a particular institution of higher learning.Words are in different sense relations with each other. Some words have more similar senses than others. For example, the sense of desk is more closely rel

8、ated to that of table than to chair. Conversely we can say the sense of desk is more different from that of chair than from table. And the sense of desk is included in the sense of furniture, or the sense of furniture includes that of desk. As a result the senseof a word may be seen as the network o

9、f its sense relations with others. In other words, sense may be defined as the semantic relations between one word and another, or more generally between one linguistic unit and another. It is concerned with the intra-linguistic relations. In contrast, as we alluded to earlier, reference is concerne

10、d with the relation between a word and the thing it refers to, or more generally between a linguistic unit and a non-linguistic entity it refers to.There are generally three kinds of sense relations recognized, namely, sameness relation, and oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation.SynonymyA

11、ntonymyHyponymySection Two Componential AnalysisQ1. What is Componential analysis?Q2. What is the meaning smaller than word?5. Componential analysisComponential analysis refers to an approach adopted by structural semanticists in describing the meaning of words or phrases. This approach is based on

12、the belief that the total meaning of a word can be analyzed in terms of a number of distinct elements or meaning components (called semantic features)The study of meaning in any language shows that lexical items overlap in meaning and share common properties e.g. Lions and tigers both contain an ele

13、ment of “ wild animalness ” C.alf puppy and baby can be considered as all sharing an element of non adultness, while cow, woman and tigress all containing an element of “ femaleness ” , But because of other properties each word contains, none of them will be said as being synonymous to any one of th

14、e others.One attempt to account for this phenomenon is to assume that lexical items, like phonemes are made up out of a number of component partsC. omponential analysis is often seen as a processaiming at breaking down the meaning of a word into its minimal distinctive features or properties, which

15、are also called components by some linguists. One way of describing the components of a word is to use feature symbols, which are usually written in capitalized letters, with “ +”“-“ before them,plus sign indicates the presence of a certain property, and minus sign indicates the absence of it. e.g.m

16、an : + HUMAN+ ADULT+ MALEwoman: + HUMAN+ ADULT- MALEboy:+ HUMAN- ADULT+ MALEgirl:+ HUMAN- ADULT- MALEwords like father, mother, daughter and son, which involves a relation betweentwo entities, may be shown as follows:father = PARENT (X,Y) & MALE (X)mother = PARENT (X,Y) & MALE (X)verbs can a

17、lso be analyzed in this way, for exampletake = CAUSE (X, (HAVE (X,Y)give= CAUSE (X, (HA VE (X,Y)?Advantages: by specifying the semantic features of certain words, we may better account for sense relations, Synonymy having the same semantic componentsAntonymy having a contrasting componentHyponymyhav

18、ing all semantic components of another.?Disadvantages: It would be senselessto analyze the meaning of every word by breaking it into its meaning components.Section Three Sentence MeaningQ1. What is Sentence meaning?Q2. What is logical semantics?Sentence meaningThe defining of sentence meaning has tu

19、rned out to be a more complicated issue than the defining of the meanings of individual lexical items.The meaning of a sentence is the sum total of the meanings of all it components.The meaning of a sentenceis a product of both lexical and grammatical meaning. There are two aspects to sentence meani

20、ng: grammatical meaning and semantic meaning. (An integrated theory) (Text book) The meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the constituent words and the way they are combined (the principle of compositionality)Logical semantics (prepositional logic & predicate logic)Prepositional logi

21、c (prepositional calculus or sentential calculus)i:s the study of the truth conditions for propositionsProposition: “is what is expressedby a declarative sentencewhen that sentenceis uttered to make a statemen” t (Lyons 1977:141-2), a very important property of which is that it has a truth value. It

22、 is either true or false.Disadvantage: concerned with the semantic relation between propositions, treats a simple proposition as an unanalyzed whole.If snow is white, grass is greenIf snow is black, grass is green(cf. truth table P180, P q,尸 q)Predicate logic ( predicate calculus): is the study of t

23、he internal structure of simple propositions.Disadvantage: Socrates is a man, Socrates is rational, Socrates ran. All these three words are treated as one-place predicates, while in English they belong to three different word classes. Besides, there are more quantifiers in natural languages than all

24、 and some, such as, many, most, dozens of, several, a few etc. But there is no adequate provision for them in predicate logic.9Chapter 5 MeaningTeaching aims: enable the students to have a better understanding of semantics and wording meaning.Focal points: Leech's seven classifications of meanin

25、g, semantic triangle, sense relations between words and sentencesTeaching difficultiessense relations between sentences, different types of antonymyTeaching procedureThe subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics. In this chapter, wewill study another branch of linguisticssemantics.

26、1. An IntroductionDefinition: In linguistics, it is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular. Its goal is to reveal how language is matched with their proper meanings by the speakers of that language.Semantics is an old and young branch.Dating from Plato, the s

27、tudy of meaning has a long history. Philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists all claim a deep interest in the study of meaning, although they differ in their focus of interest.Philosophers: the relation between linguistic expression and what they refer to in the real world and evaluation of the

28、 truth value of it.Psychologists: understanding the working of human mind through language.So you many find several books bearing the title" semantics " but talking aboutdifferent things. Here we just focus on linguistic semantics.In linguistics, compared with other branches we have discus

29、sed, semantics is very young and new. The term semantics is a recent addition to the English language. It has only a history of over 100 years.1893 French linguist Breal coined“semantique ”1897 Breal first use it as the science of meaning.1900 its English version came out1980s semantics began to be

30、introduced into China“Cinderella of linguistics(Kempson)One of the most famous books on semantics isThe Meaning of Meaning published in 1923.2. Meanings of“meaning1582.1 what is meaning?What is the meaning of “desk” ？I didn't mean to hurt you. (intend) Life without faith has no meaning. (value)

31、It was John I mean not Harry (refer to ) V1.1 7 Types of meaning (GLeech)Denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world.Connotation: some additional, esp. emotive meaning.3. The referential theoryRelates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to

32、, or stand for.3.1 Semantic triangleProposed by Ogden & Richards in their The Meaning of Meaning ”. They saw the relationship between the word and the thing it refers to is not direct. It ' s mediated by concept.thought or referencereferentIn this diagram, the symbol or form refers to lingui

33、stic elements (words, phrases), the referent refers to the things in the real world, and thought or reference refers to “concept ” .e.g. The dog over there looks unfriendly.The word “ dog” is directly associated with a certain concept in our mind., what a “dog” is like, but it is not directly linked

34、 to the referent (the particular dog) in this particular case. Thus, the symbol of a word signifies thing by virtue of the concept associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of a language, and the concept looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word.3.2 Sense &am

35、p; referencesense and reference are the two terms often encountered in the study of word meaning.They are two related but different aspects of meaning.Sensethe inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all thefeatures of the linguistic form; It 8 abstract and de-contextualized

36、. It 'the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in. It is concerned with the intra-linguistic relations.ReferenceWhat a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; It deals withthe relationship between the linguistic elements and the non-linguistic world of experience.

37、For example, the word“ dog” is given the definition“ a common domestic animal keby human beings for work, hunting etc or as a pet ” T. his doesn rtefer to any particular dog that exists in the real world, but applies to any animal that meets the features described in the definition, so this is the s

38、ense of the word“ dog” . Bsay “ Thedog is barking ”w,e must be talking about a certain dog existent in the situation, the word “ dog” refers to a dog known to both the speaker and the hearer.This is the reference of the word“ dog” in this particular situation.To some extent, we can say every word ha

39、s a sense, i.e. some conceptual content. But not every word has a reference e.g. grammatical words like but if etc, don t refer to anything.Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations.e.g. I was one bitten by a dog.Mind you. There is a dog over there.

40、Here the two “ dog” thbeesaar me sense, but have two different references in the two utterances.Sometimes linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sensee.g. “ morning stanrd “” evening star ” can refer to the same star “ Venus”2. Major Sense relationsWords are in different sense rela

41、tions with each otherThere are generally 3 kinds of sense relations: sameness relation, oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation2.1 . synonymySameness or close similarity of meaning.Words that are close in meaning are called synonyms.2.2 AntonymyOppositeness of meaningWords that are opposite

42、 in meaning are antonyms.Oppositeness can be found on different dimensions. Gradable antonymy (mainly adj.)good/ bad, long /short, narrow/ wideThey are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. There are often

43、 intermediate forms between them. Complementary antonymyalive/ dead, male/ female, present/ absent, pass/ fail , boy/ girlIt is characterized by the feature that the denial of one member of the pair implies theassertion of the other and the assertion of one means the denial of the other.In other wor

44、ds, it is not a matter of degree between two extremes, but a matter of either one or the other. Converse antonymy (relational opposites)buy/ sell, lend/ borrow, before /after, teacher/ student, above /belowThe members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal

45、 of a relationship between two entities.2.3 Hyponymy ( a matter of class membership)the sense relation between a more general,more inclusive word and a more specific words .cow/ animal, rose/ flower, honesty/ virtueThe word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific word are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same super-ordinate are co-hyponyms to each other.1. Sense relations between sentencesSense relationships also exist between sentences1.1 A entails B ( A is an entailment of B )A: He has be