Introduction

In English the study of meaning in language has been

known by many names that involve the Ancient Greek work (
sem , sign , mark )
In 1690 a Greek rendering of the term semiotics the
interpretation of signs and symbols
In 1831 , the term sematology is suggested for the third
branch of division of knowledge a kin to lack the sign of our
knowledge .
The definition of semantics
According to Palmer semantics is the technical term
used to refer to the study of meaning and science meaning is
part of language semantics is part of linguistics
According to Saeed semantics is the study of the meaning of
words and sentence communication through language
The Brief History of Semantics
Ogbulogo.et.al. (2011: 15) says that Alfred Korzybski was
the first person who attempts studying semantics as a distinct
discipline, separate from the discipline of philosophy.
Incidentally, Korzybski was a non-linguist who was passionate
about introducing a generally acceptable science of
communication. Prior to the work ofKorzybski, semantics has
been looked at from a nonscientific perspective but
Korzybski’s
 work was the first formal attempt at bringing in a scientific
model to the study of semantics . Korzybski started by
describing all entities and realities by assigning labels to
them. He went further to group the names into three. He had
names for common objects such as chair, stone, cow etc. He
also had labels for groups and collections like nations
,animals, people etc.
Korzybski’s third group of labels does not have identifiable
referents
in the outside world .These labels are highly abstract and do
not readily lend themselves to the assignment of concrete
reality. These labels are only assignable to concrete realities
by imagination. Such labels include but are not limited to
freedom, love, democracy etc. They feature in aesthetics,
philosophy and politics. However, this is not the same with
common objects since there seems to be a direct
correspondence between items and linguistic expressions. It
is interesting to also know that a serious difficulty tends to be
posed by labels for groups as a result of the wide range of
items within the group. The main challenge with abstract
labels stems from the fact that meaning does not have an
objective reference in reality because different people will
react to different words differently. For
instance, the word “love” would be viewed differently by
different people as a
 result of their circumstance or present reality. One person
who probably is in a loving relationship will view it positively
while another in an unfulfilled relationship will view it
negatively .Hence, their reactions will be different and will
therefore evoke different emotions from them .Two other
scholars, Odgen and Richards came very close to the analysis
of meaning by combining philosophical processes and
linguistic methodologies. How did they do this? They
introduced the concept referent to describe the physical
object or situation which the word identifies in the real world.
They pointed out that the representation or situation should
be seen as a referent while the actual pronunciation or
orthographic representation will constitute the symbol.
Since the world is dynamic, the study of semantics has
not been left out .One of such areas that have remained
dynamic among others is the concept of change in meaning.
Semantics has been at the fore in the study of change in
meaning. As early as1933, Bloomfield observed a system of
change in the meaning of words. Instances of change in
meaning of words overtime :
1. Meat used to represent all types of food.
2. Bitter derives from the metaphor of biting.
3. The meaning of astound derives from the weakened
meaning of thunder.
4. The meaning of knight has been an elevation of the
concept of boy.
5. The word money relates to the Latin moneo [warn] or
admonish because money wasmade in Rome at the temple of
the goddess, Junto Moneta.
THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS
Semantics is derived from the Greek semanticos,
meaning the study of meaning. Lehrer in Pateda (2010: 6)
says that semantics is the study of meaning .Semantics
focuses on the relationship between markers such as words,
phrases ,signs and symbols. In the general sense of semantics
is a discipline that examines the meaning of the lingual unit,
both the lexical meaning and the grammatical meaning. The
lexical meaning is the meaning of the smallest semantic unit
called lexeme, while the grammatical meaning is the meaning
formed from the merging of linguistic units. Based on these
opinions it can be concluded that semantics is the study of
the meaning contained in words or groups of words .The
semantic word is then agreed upon as a term used for the
field of linguistics which studies the relationship between
linguistic signs and the thins they mark. Or in other words,
that semantics is a field of study in linguistics that studies
meaning or inner meaning language. The object of semantic
study is the meaning of language. More precisely, the
meaning of language units such as words, phrases, clauses,
sentences, and discourse .There are several types of
semantics, which are distinguished based on the level or part
of the language of inquiry is the lexicon of that language, so
the type of semantics is called lexical semantics. This lexical
semantics investigates the meaning that exists in the lexemes
of the language. Therefore, the meaning is exist in the leksem
called lexical meaning. Leksem is a term commonly used in
semantic studies to refer to meaningful language-units. The
term lexeme can more or less be paired with terms that are
commonly used in morphological and syntactic studies, and
which are commonly defined as the smallest free
grammatical unit (Chaer, 1990: 7-8).
The distinction is between semantics and pragmatics
.The terms denote related and complementary fields of
studying both concerning the transmission of meaning
through language . Drawing the line between the two fields is
difficult and controversial but we can turn to an early use of
the term pragmatics in Charles Morris s division of semiotics
(Saeed:2003).
 Conclusion
So, it will be mistake to try to define meaning by
reducing it to the term of sciences other than the science 0f
language e .g Psychology or Chemistery
The meaning can be best studied as a linguisticss
phenomenon in its own right not as something out side
language .
This means we investigate what it is to know alanguage
semantically e.g to know what it is to know alanguage
semantically e.g to know what is involved in recognizing
relation of meaning between sentence and in recognizing
which sentences are meaning and which are not.
Republic of Iraq
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Thi-Qar University
College of Education for Humanities
Department of English/MA programme

Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning

Semantics
Week 2

Supervised by
Asst. Prof. Saddam Salim Hmood

Submitted by
Hussein Kareem Hassan
Haneen Shawqi Muhammad,
Atiaf Shaker Ghamis

2023/2024
 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

- Theories of meaning
Breaking the circle in linguistics refers to the problem of defining meaning without
using other words that have meaning. For example, if we define "meaning" as "the sense or
import of something," then we have simply used the word "sense" to explain the word
"meaning," which is not very helpful.

Also, imagine that you are trying to explain to a child what a pen is. You could start by
saying that it is a long, thin object that you use to write. But the child might then ask you what
writing is. And you might then have to explain that writing is a way of using symbols to
represent language. But then the child might ask you what language is. This is the problem of
the definitional circle. It is difficult to define one thing without using other words that also
need to be defined. (Riemer, N. 2010)

1- Meanings as referents/denotations

There are a number of different theories try to break the definitional circle, and each
theory has its own strengths and weaknesses. One theory is to define meaning in terms of
reference (referents/denotations). This means that the meaning of a word is the thing that the
word refers to.

‘In its simplest form this theory would claim that reference picks out elements in the
real world. As described by Ruth Kempson (1977: 13) such an approach might claim the
following:

proper names denote individuals

common names denote sets of individuals
verbs denote actions
adjectives denote properties of individuals
adverbs denote properties of actions
(Saeed, 2016)

Another example: ‘In Sydney, ‘the bridge’ means the Harbour Bridge’.
The speaker of this sentence is identifying the meaning of the word "bridge" with its referent,
which is the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In other words, the speaker is saying that the word
"bridge" means the same thing as the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

Problems with the referential theory of meaning:

 Multiple referents: A single referent can often be referred to by a variety of different

expressions.
 Abstract nouns / nominal expressions: It is not clear what the referents of abstract
nouns like "love, honor, pleasure, or generosity," or nominal expressions (World War
III, a unicorn, might be. Since there is no isolable object in the world to which these
nouns apply, the notion of a referent is rather hard to invoke or applied.
 Grammatical words: What are the denotations of grammatical words like "of" or "the"?
These cases all pose problems for the referential theory of meaning: because the words
have no referents/denotations, they are left without any specifiable meaning.

So, that means, the referential theory of meaning is unable to account for the full range of
meanings that linguistic expressions can have. It is therefore necessary to look for a more
sophisticated theory of meaning that can account for both the referential and non-referential
aspects of meaning.

2- Meanings as concepts/mental representations

Another theory is to define meaning in terms of concepts/ mental representations. This

means that the meaning of a word is the concept that the word represents in our minds. The
concept theory of meaning identifies the meaning of a linguistic expression with the concept
that it represents. Concepts are the basic constituents of thought, and they are what allow us to
make sense of the world around us.

The concept theory of meaning has several advantages over the referential theory of
meaning. First, it can account for the meaning of abstract nouns, which do not have referents
in the real world. Second, it can account for the multiple referents of a single linguistic
expression. Third, it can account for the meaning of grammatical words, which do not have
denotations.

Example: ‘Oliver is tolerant’

The concept theory of meaning can explain why we understand the meaning of the sentence
"Oliver is tolerant" even though the word "tolerant" has no single referent in the real world.
The concept TOLERANCE is a complex concept that includes properties such as patience,
kindness, and respect for the opinions of others. When we say "Oliver is tolerant," we are
attributing these properties to Oliver.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

The concept theory of meaning is a more sophisticated theory of meaning than the referential
theory of meaning. It can account for the full range of meanings that linguistic expressions
can have.

3- Meanings as brain states

The brain states theory of meaning is a theory of meaning that holds that the meaning of a
word or sentence is determined by the mental state that it expresses or evokes in the speaker or
hearer. In other words, the meaning of a word or sentence is not determined by what it refers
to or how it is used in language, but by the mental state that it is associated with. For example,
the word "happy" is associated with the mental state of happiness, and the sentence "I am
happy" evokes the mental state of happiness in the hearer. That means, the meaning of
something is what it does to our brains. When we hear or read a word or sentence, our brains
activate in certain ways. These brain activations are the meaning of the word or sentence.

 Example: When we hear the word "chair," our brains activate in a certain way. This
brain activation is the meaning of the word "chair."

4- Meaning and use

The use theory of meaning says that the meaning of a word is determined by how it is
used. In other words, the meaning of a word is not something hidden or unobservable, but
rather is something that can be seen in the way that the word is used in different contexts.

For example, the word "sorry" can be used to apologize for something you did wrong, or
it can be used to express sympathy for someone who has experienced a loss. The meaning of
the word "sorry" in each of these contexts is different, but the use theory of meaning says that
both of these meanings are real, because they are both ways in which the word "sorry" is used.

The use theory of meaning is a simple and straightforward theory, and it is able to
account for a wide range of phenomena related to language and meaning. However, it has been
criticized for being too simplistic and for failing to account for certain aspects of meaning, such
as the meaning of abstract concepts and the meaning of sentences that are not used in a literal
way.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

- Why do people believe in the use theory of meaning?

First, reason why people believe in the use theory of meaning is because it is a very
simple and straightforward theory. It does not require us to believe in any hidden or
unobservable properties of words. Instead, it simply says that the meaning of a word is
determined by how we use it in language.

Another reason why people believe in the use theory of meaning is because it is very
good at explaining a wide range of linguistic phenomena. For example, it can explain why the
same word can have different meanings in different contexts, and why it is possible to create
new meanings for words simply by using them in new ways.

- Level of meaning
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences. (Löbner S. 2013)

1- Expression meaning the meaning of a simple or complex expression taken in isolation.

(ibid)

The example sentence "I don't need your bicycle" is a good illustration of semantics. The
sentence has a literal meaning, which is that the speaker does not need the addressee's bicycle.
However, the sentence can also have a variety of other meanings, depending on the context in
which it is used.

The words need and bicycle are the main carriers of information in the sentence, so-
called content words. The meanings of most content words are very differentiated because
there are thousands of the same kind. All the other elements in our sentence are different in that
they represent items from a very limited choice of expressions of the same kind. Such words
are called function words and include articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and other
‘small’ words.

To understand the full meaning of the sentence, we need to consider a number of factors,
including:
 The meaning of the individual words: The words "I," "don't," "need," "your," and
"bicycle" all have their own individual meanings.

 The grammatical structure of the sentence: The way that the words are arranged in
the sentence also affects its meaning. For example, the fact that the subject of the
sentence is "I" tells us that the speaker is the one who does not need the bicycle.

 The context in which the sentence is used: The context in which the sentence is used
can also affect its meaning. For example, if the speaker and addressee are friends, the
sentence might be interpreted as a playful joke. However, if the speaker and addressee
are strangers, the sentence might be interpreted as a rude refusal.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

2- Utterance meaning the meaning of an expression when used in a given context of utterance
resulting from fixing reference. Utterance meaning is the meaning of a sentence when it is
actually used in a concrete context. It is different from the lexical meaning of a sentence, which
is the meaning of a sentence independently of its context. (Ibid)

- Sentence meaning, utterance meaning

Sentence meaning is the meaning of a sentence in isolation, regardless of the context in
which it is used. It is the meaning that can be derived from the words and grammar of the
sentence alone. With sentence meaning we refer to semantics.
Utterance meaning is the meaning of utterance when it is used in a specific context. It is
the meaning (sense) that is intended by the speaker or writer, taking into account the context in
which the sentence is used. With utterance meaning we refer to Pragmatics.

SCENARIO 1 SCENARIO 2
1 August 2012, morning. Mary has been Same time and place. John’s five-year-old
planning a trip to town that afternoon. Two daughter Maggie is playing at her place with
days before, she talked with her neighbour her friend Titus. They are playing with a
John about the trip and asked him to lend her game of cards that display all kinds of
his bicycle. She had lent her car to her vehicles. Titus holds a card that shows a
daughter and did not know if she would get snowmobile. Maggie is eager to exchange
it back in time. Meanwhile her daughter is this card for one of hers and offers Titus a
back and has returned Mary’s car. Mary is card with a bicycle. Titus rejects the
talking with John on her mobile, telling him: exchange:
I don’t need your bicycle. I don’t need your bicycle.

The sentence above "I don't need your bicycle" has the same lexical meaning in the two
scenarios given in the example. However, its utterance meaning is different in each scenario.

In the first scenario, the speaker is telling her neighbor that she does not need to borrow
his bicycle because she has her car back.

In the second scenario, the speaker is telling her friend's child that she does not want to
trade her card for his card because she prefers to keep her bicycle card.

The context of utterance includes all of the information that is relevant to understanding the
meaning of an utterance, such as the speaker, the listener, the time and place of the utterance,
and the shared knowledge of the speaker and listener. The technical term for this is context of
utterance. The context of utterance, CoU for short, is the sum of circumstances that. The
context of utterance (CoU) comprises the following aspects of the situation in which an
utterance is produced:

 the speaker (or producer) of the utterance

 the addressee(s) (or recipient(s)) of the utterance
 the time at which the utterance is produced and/or received
 the place where the utterance is produced and/or received
 the facts given when the utterance is produced and/or received

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

The notion of utterance meaning is important because it allows us to understand how

language is used in communication. When we understand the utterance meaning of a sentence,
we can understand what the speaker is trying to communicate, even if the sentence is
ambiguous or has multiple possible interpretations. Utterance meaning is a complex topic, but
it is an important one to understand in order to understand how language is used in
communication.

3- Communicative meaning the meaning of an utterance as a communicative act in a given

social setting. (Ibid) Communicative meaning is the level of interpretation of an utterance that
is concerned with the speaker's intention. It is the meaning that the speaker wants to convey to
the listener, and it is determined by the context of the utterance, including the speaker-listener
relationship and the ongoing social interaction.

The three levels of meaning are:

 Expression meaning: The meaning of the individual words and sentences that make up
the utterance.

 Utterance meaning: The meaning of the utterance as a whole, taking into account the
context of the utterance, such as the speaker-listener relationship and the ongoing social
interaction.

 Communicative meaning: The speaker's intention in uttering the sentence.

- Seven Types of Meaning

1-Conceptual meaning (sometimes called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning). This is the

core meaning of a word or phrase, and it is what is typically found in dictionaries. For example,
the conceptual meaning of the word "dog" is a four-legged, furry mammal that barks. So, it is
the literal meaning of word.
2- Connotative Meaning: Connotative meaning is the communicative value that an expression
has by virtue of what it refers to. Connotative meaning is the communicative value that an
expression has by virtue of what it refers to, It is the 'real world' experience that one associates
with an expression when one uses or hears it. Connotative meaning is peripheral to conceptual
meaning because it is relatively unstable, indeterminate and open-ended. It varies according to
culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual. In contrast, conceptual meaning
is generally taken as fundamental to semantic theory and is assumed to be finite and
determinate. In other words, it is the additional meaning that a word or phrase has beyond its
conceptual meaning. It can include associations, emotions, and cultural references. For
example, the connotative meaning of the word "dog" might include loyalty, friendship, and
playfulness.

3- Social meaning: is that which a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances
of its use. It is conveyed through different dimensions and levels of style within the same
language, such as dialect, time, province, status, modality, and singularity.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

In a more local sense, social meaning can include what has been called the illocutionary
force of an utterance. for example, whether it is to be interpreted as a request, an assertion, an
apology, a threat, etc. The function an utterance performs in this respect may be only indirectly
related to its conceptual meaning. The sentence I haven't got a knife has the form and meaning
of an assertion, and yet in social reality (e.g. if said to the waiter in a restaurant) it can readily
take on the force of a request such as 'Please bring me a knife’.

4- Affective meaning is the personal feelings of the speaker, including his attitude to the
listener, or his attitude to something he is talking about. It is often explicitly conveyed through
the conceptual or connotative content of the words used, but can also be conveyed through
politeness, intonation, and voice-timbre.

Affective meaning is largely a parasitic category in the sense that to express our
emotions we rely upon the mediation of other categories of meaning- conceptual, connotative,
or stylistic. Emotional expression through style comes about, for instance, when we adopt an
impolite tone to express displeasure, as in this example (Will you belt up.), or when we adopt
a casual tone to express friendliness. On the other hand, there are elements of language (like
Aha! and yippee!) whose chief function is to express emotion. When we use these, we
communicate feelings and attitudes without the mediation of any other kind of semantic
function. We can say, it is the emotional meaning of a word or phrase. For example, the word
"happy" has a positive affective meaning, while the word "sad" has a negative affective
meaning.

 Affective meaning:
o "Oh my goodness!" (surprise)
o "I'm so happy for you!" (joy)
o "You're a terrible person!" (anger)

5- Reflected meaning: is the meaning which arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning,
when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense. reflected meaning, which
is a phenomenon whereby a single word or phrase is associated with more than one sense or
meaning. In the example Leech gives, the words "The Comforter" and "The Holy Ghost" both
refer to the Third Person of the Trinity, but they have different everyday meanings. The word
"comforter" is associated with warmth and comfort, while the word "ghost" is associated with
awe and fear. In other words, reflected meaning: This is the meaning that a word or phrase has
because of its relationship to other words or phrases in the text. For example, the word "red"
in the sentence "The red rose is beautiful" has a different reflected meaning than the word "red"
in the sentence "The red traffic light is on."
6- Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires on account of the meanings
of words which tend to occur in its environment. Pretty and handsome share common ground
in the meaning ‘good-looking’, but may be distinguished by the range of nouns with which
they are likely to co-occur or collocate. (Pretty girl, boy, woman, flower, colour, etc.) Here are
some examples of collocative meaning:

 The words "hot" and "cold" are often collocated with drinks, such as "hot coffee" and
"cold water."

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

 The words "big" and "small" are often collocated with objects, such as "big house" and
"small car."

7- Thematic meaning, or what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer

organizes the message, in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis. It is often felt, for example,
that an active sentence such as (Mr. Smith donated the first prize.) has a different meaning from
its passive equivalent (The first prize was donated by Mr. Smith.), although in conceptual
content they seem to be the same. Certainly, these have different communicative values in that
they suggest different contexts.

Thematic meaning is mainly a matter of choice between alternative grammatical

construction, as in:

 A man is waiting in the hall.

 There’s a man waiting in the hall.
In other cases, it is stress and intonation rather than grammatical construction that
highlights information in one part of a sentence. If the word electric is given contrastive stress
in: (Bill uses an electric razor.) The effect is to focus attention on that word as containing new
information, against a background of what is already assumed to be known.

- Associative Meaning:

Reflected meaning, collocative meaning, affective meaning and social meaning: all these
have more in common with connotative meaning than with conceptual meaning; they all have
the same open-ended, variable character, and lend themselves to analysis in terms of scales or
ranges, rather than in discrete either-this-or-that terms. They can all be brought together under
the heading of associative meaning, and to explain communication on these levels. In other
words, associative meaning is a type of meaning that is not based on the literal, or conceptual,
meaning of words. It is instead based on the associations that we have with words, such as their
emotional connotations, their social implications, and the way they are used in different
contexts. (Leech, 1981)

Associative meaning is often more difficult to define and understand than conceptual
meaning, but it is also more nuanced and expressive. It is an important part of how we
communicate with each other, and it is what gives language its richness and complexity.
example of associative meaning:

 The word "home" has a different associative meaning for everyone. It may be associated
with family, safety, comfort, or a sense of belonging.

Associative meaning is what allows us to understand and appreciate things like poetry,
literature, and music. It is also what allows us to communicate with each other on a deeper
level, beyond the literal meaning of words.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

- Demarcation Problems:

The difficulties of demarcating the boundaries between different types of meaning. For
example, it can be difficult to distinguish between conceptual meaning and connotative
meaning, or between conceptual meaning and socio-stylistic meaning.

The author gives the following examples:

 The difference between the sentences "He stuck the key in his pocket" and "He put the
key in his pocket" could be seen as a matter of style, or it could be seen as a conceptual
difference, with the word "stick" having a more precise denotation in the first sentence.
 The difference between the verbs "smile" and "grin" could be seen as a matter of
collocation, or it could be seen as a conceptual difference, with a grin being a broader,
toothier, and more potentially hostile expression than a smile.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

1- Conceptual meaning or Sense Logical, cognitive, or denotative

content.

2.Connotative meaning What is communicated by virtue of what

language refers to.
SEVEN TYPES OF MEANING

ASSOCIATIVE MEANING

3.Social meaning What is communicated of the social

circumstances of language use.

4. Affective meaning What is communicated of the feelings and

attitudes of the speaker/writer.

5. Reflected meaning What is communicated through

association with another sense of the same
expression.

6. Collocative meaning What is communicated through

association with words which tend to
occur in the environment of another word.

7. Thematic meaning What is communicated by the way in

which the message is organized in terms of
order and emphasis.

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 Week 2 – Semantics (Theories, Levels, and Types of meaning)

Reference

 Leech, G. (1981): Semantics, The study of meaning (2nd edition) Penguin Books,
England
 Löbner, S. (2013); Understanding Semantics, (2nd edition) Routledge 2 Park Square,
Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
 Riemer, N. (2010); Introducing Semantics; (1st edition) Cambridge, CUP
 Saeed, J.I. (2016); Semantics; (4th edition), Willy Blackwell.

11
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
University of Thi-Qar
College of Education for Humanities
Department of English

Week 3
Title of Assignment

Basic Terms in Semantics

MA Course
2023-2024

Instructor:
Asst. Prof. Saddam Salim

Prepared by:
Ali Zghair Awadh
Israa Gahzi
Maysaa Mohsin

1
1. Three Challenges in Doing Semantics
Analyzing a speaker’s semantic knowledge is a challenging task. This challenge
can be by adopting a simple but intuitively attractive theory of semantics, which
we can call the definitions theory. This theory would simply state that to give
the meaning of linguistic expressions we should establish definitions of the
meanings of words. In our task of attaching definitions to words, we will be faced
with a number of challenges. (Saeed, 2016)

1. The problem of circularity: How can we define the meaning of a word without
using other words? This is a problem that faces dictionary writers: if you look up
a word like ferret in a monolingual English dictionary, you might find a definition
like “Domesticated, bred for hunting rabbits, rats, etc.” To understand this, you
have to understand the words in the definition. According to our aims for
semantics, we have to describe the meanings of these words too, beginning with
domesticated. The definition for this might be “of animals, tame, living with
human beings.” Since this definition is also in words, we have to give the
meaning, for example, of tame. If the definitions of word meaning are given in
words, the process might never end. The question is: can we ever step outside
language in order to describe it, or are we forever involved in circular definitions?

2. The problem of whether linguistic knowledge is different from general

knowledge: means how to make sure that our definitions of a word’s meaning are
exact. if we ask where the meanings of words exist, the answer must be: in the
minds of native speakers of the language. Can we make a distinction between
linguistic knowledge (about the meaning of words) and encyclopedic
knowledge (about the way the world is)? For example, if I believe that a whale
is a fish, and you believe that it is a mammal, do our words have different
meanings when we both use the noun whale? Presumably you still understand me
when I say I dreamt that I was swallowed by a whale. (ibid)

There is another aspect to this problem: what should we do if we find that

speakers of a language differ in their understanding of what a word means?
Whose knowledge should we pick as our “meaning”? We might avoid the
decision by picking just one speaker and limiting our semantic description to an
idiolect, the technical term for an individual’s language. (ibid)

3. The Problem of the contribution of context to meaning: means the meaning

of a word can be changed depending on the context in which it is used? For
example, ‘He’s dying’ might mean one thing when said of a terminally ill patient,
and another as a comment watching a stand-up comedian failing to get laughs.
Or again: ‘It’s getting late’ if said to a friend at a party might be used to mean
Let’s leave. (ibid)

2
2. The semiotic triangle: language, mind, world and meaning
To describe meaning fully, we seem to have to make reference to three principal
terms: language, the human mind( internal factor), and the world (external factor).
These three aspects of the meaning phenomenon are often symbolized as the
‘semiotic triangle’. (Riemer, 2010)

Language Things in the real world

At the top of the triangle is what Ogden and Richards called ‘thought’. This
reflects the fact that language comes from human beings, and is therefore
ultimately a product of processes in the mind or brain. But ‘thought’ can be a
misleading label for these processes, for two reasons. First, these mental
processes need not be conscious. Even though we sometimes do consciously
think about what we are going to say, our speech is more often spontaneous,
emerging without our being aware of any preliminary stage of mental preparation.
Since it is the brain that produces language, we know that some such preliminary
stage must have taken place, but since this stage is so often unconscious, the label
‘thought’ is not the most appropriate. The second reason that ‘thought’ is an
unfortunate label for the mental processes at the origin of speech is that it excludes
the non-rational, emotional side of our inner life. The processes leading to speech
should not be limited to what we would class simply as ‘thinking’, but extend to
include our emotions and volition as well. This is most obviously true with
exclamations: exclamations of pain, surprise or happiness often do not reflect
anything we would describe as a ‘thought’, but rather reflect a particular
feeling.
In order to remove the unwanted implication that the mental processes leading to
speech are purely conscious and non-emotional, we can replace ‘thought’ in
Ogden and Richards’ diagram with the more neutral term ‘psychology’. (ibid)

3
The leftmost head of the triangle, the ‘symbol’, is the most straightforward. The
symbol, in this terminology, is whatever perceptible token is chosen to express
the speaker’s intended meaning. the author exclusively concerned with linguistic
communication; we can replace the broader term ‘symbol’ with the simple
‘language’. (ibid)

The last head of the triangle is the ‘referent’, or whatever things, events or
situations in the world the language is about.

We can now consider the relations between the three points of the triangle. First,
note that psychology has a causal relation to both referent and symbol. On the
side of the symbol, the causal relation to psychology is explained by the fact that
it is our minds that create language by choosing and constructing the particular
linguistic expressions used. (ibid)

In the case of the referent, the causal relation comes from the fact that in using
language we intend our words to have a certain referent. For example, if I point
to a car parked on the street and say ‘that car has its lights on’ I intend my words
to choose this car, rather than another, as the referent of my words, and I expect
the hearer of my words to do the same.

In contrast to the causal relations on the psychology-symbol and psychology-

referent sides of the triangle, there is no causal relation between symbol and
referent. Words have no direct relation to the things they stand for. There is no
inherent relation between a string of sounds and a particular referent: this is the
reason that different languages use entirely different words for the same thing.
(ibid:)
In other words, the language is arbitrary which means that there is no “natural”
connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. It is possible to make the
words “fit” the concept they indicate. but this type of game only emphasizes the
arbitrariness of the connection that normally exists between a word and its
meaning. (Yule, 2020)

4
According to Palmer (1981), the semiotic triangle is a model of meaning proposed
by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards in their 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning. It
consists of three elements:

 Symbol: The linguistic representation of the meaning, such as a word or

phrase.
 Referent: The object or concept in the world that the symbol refers to.
 Thought or reference: The mental concept of the reference, which mediates
between the symbol and the reference.

Ogden and Richards argued that there is no direct link between symbols and
referents, but that meaning is instead constructed through the mediation of
thought or reference. This is because symbols can be used to refer to objects or
concepts that are not physically present, or even to objects or concepts that do not
exist in the real world.

The semiotic triangle has been influential in many fields, including linguistics,
philosophy, and psychology. It has been used to study a wide range of
phenomena, such as the meaning of words, the interpretation of texts, and the
development of language in children.

However, the semiotic triangle has also been criticized for a number of reasons.
One criticism is that it is difficult to define the concept of "thought or reference"
in a way that is both precise and useful. Another criticism is that the semiotic
triangle does not account for the context in which symbols are used, which can
have a significant impact on their meaning. (Palmer, 1981)

Despite its limitations, the semiotic triangle remains a valuable tool for
understanding the complex nature of meaning. It provides a useful framework for
thinking about how symbols and referents are related to each other, and how our
mental concepts mediate this relationship. (ibid)

Palmer critiques the semiotic triangle on the grounds that it is a "ghost-in-the-

machine" argument. Palmer argues that the concept of "thought or reference" is
nothing more than a hypothetical entity that is posited to explain meaning, but
which does not explain anything at all. He also said that the semiotic triangle is
unable to account for the context in which symbols are used, or for the subjective
nature of meaning. (ibid)

5
3. Lexemes
lexeme is a term used by some linguists to refer to the minimal distinctive unit in
the semantic system of a language. The lexeme is thus postulated as the abstract
unit underlying such sets of grammatical variants as walk, walks, walking,
walked, or big, bigger, biggest. idiomatic phrases, by this definition, are also
considered lexemic (e.g. kick the bucket (= ‘die’)). Lexemes are the units that are
conventionally listed in dictionaries as separate entries. (Crystal, 2008)
In providing a semantic description of a language, we do not need to treat all the
variant morphological forms of a single word separately. Instead, we describe the
meanings of a language’s lexemes or the abstract units that unite all the
morphological variants of a single word. For example, we can say that go, goes,
went, have gone and to go all are instantiations of the lexeme to go. (Riemer,
2010: 16)

4. Reference and Sense

The sense of a lexeme may be defined as the general meaning or the concept
underlying the word. As a first approximation, we can describe this as what we
usually think of as contained in a dictionary entry for the word. The notion of
sense can be made more explicit through contrast with the category of referent. A
word’s referent is the object which it stands for on a specific occasion of use.
For example: The queen has fallen off the table.

If I am talking about a rowdy evening at Buckingham Palace in 2009, the referent

of the word queen is Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, and the referent of the word table
is a particular piece of English royal furniture. But if I am talking not about
Elizabeth II but about Queen Margrethe of Denmark, the words queen and table
have different referents: not Elizabeth II and the English piece of furniture, but
Margrethe and the Danish one. On each of the occasions is uttered, there is one
and only one referent of each word. (Ibid:)

One important point made by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1974), whose
ideas have been so influential in the development of modern linguistics, is that
the meaning of a word is not just determined by its definition in a dictionary. It is
also influenced by the way it is used in the context of a language and the way it
refers to things in the real world. Words stand in a relationship to the world,
or our mental classification of it: they allow us to identify parts of the world, and
make statements about them. Thus, if a speaker says He saw Paul or She bought
a dog, the underlined nominals allow her to identify, pick out, or refer to specific
entities in the world. However, words also derive their value from their position
within the language system. The relationship by which language hooks onto the

6
world is usually called reference. The semantic links between elements within
the vocabulary system is an aspect of their sense, or meaning. (Saeed, 2016)

Reference is the relationship between linguistic elements and the non-linguistic

world of experience. While sense is the relationship between linguistic elements
themselves (mostly words). It is concerned only with intra-linguistic relations
For, examples:

 The words "ram" and "ewe" refer to particular kinds of animals, they have the
same sense because they are both members of the pair "male and female
sheep."
 The words "narrow" and "wide" have different senses, but they have the same
reference because they both refer to the width of something.

Some linguists have tried to limit semantics to the study of sense relations, but
this is difficult because sense and reference are often interconnected. Other
linguists have defined semantics in terms of truth-relations between sentences,
but this is also problematic because not all meaning is about truth.

Although some linguists have tried to exclude reference from semantics, it is an

important aspect of meaning because it is the way that language connects to the
world around us. Deictic expressions such as "I," "you," "this," "that," "now," and
"tomorrow" are particularly important examples of this because they cannot be
paraphrased without reference to the real world. (Palmer, 1981)

5. Denotation, Connotation, and Reference: Intension and Extension

Denotation may be defined as the general meaning or the concept underlying the
word. It is the literal meaning (dictionary meaning) of the word.
The denotation of a linguistic expression is that aspect of its meaning which is
involved in its potential for use in making true statements about the world. A
distinction is made between two aspects of denotation. Take the word ‘dog’ this
word can be used to refer to certain things but not others. The set of things the
word properly applies to is known as its 'extension', in this case, the set of all
dogs (the term 'denotation' is sometimes restricted to this). However, the word
also denotes the property or properties something has to have in order to count as
a dog (we can think of this as the concept DOG; this is called the 'intension' of

7
the word (also sometimes called connotation). (The extension of a word is
sometimes called its 'reference' and the intension its 'sense'). (Cruse, 2006)

Extension (reference) expression is the class of entities that it defines, and the
intension (sense) is the defining property of the class. For example, it is
convenient to be able to say that the word 'red' denotes, not only the class of red
things, but also the property of redness. (Lyons, 2005)

Connotative meaning is the communicative value that an expression has by virtue

of what it refers to., it is the 'real world' experience that one associates with an
expression when one uses or hears it. It varies according to culture, historical
period, and the experience of the individual. (Leech, 1981)

Language is used to communicate about things, happenings, and states of affairs

in the world, and one way of approaching the study of meaning is to attempt to
correlate expressions in language with aspects of the world. This is known as the
extensional approach to meaning. The thing or things in the world referred to by
a particular expression is its referent(s): in saying “The cat's hungry”, I am
(normally) referring to a particular cat, and that cat is the referent of the
expression the cat. The whole utterance attributes a particular state to the cat in
question. We can also consider the whole class of potential referents of the word
cat, namely, the class of cats. This, too, is sometimes called the reference of the
word cat. But this is clearly different from the designation of particular
individuals as in the case of “The cat's hungry”, so, to avoid confusion, we shall
follow Lyons and say that the class of cats constitutes the denotation of the word
cat. So, in the case of “The cat's hungry”, the word cat denotes the class of cats,
but the cat refers to a particular cat.

The alternative to an extensional approach to meaning is an intensional approach.

Take the word cat. Why do we use it to refer to cats, rather than, say, to platypuses
or aardvarks or spiny anteaters? One answer is that the word is associated with
some kind of mental representation of the type of thing that it can be used to refer
to, and aardvarks do not fit the description associated with the word cat. This
representation constitutes what is called the sense of the word (or at least part of
it). (Cruse, 2000)

8
6. Descriptive and Attributive meaning

Descriptive meaning is the aspect of the meaning of a sentence which determines

whether or not any proposition it expresses is true or false. It is also the aspect of
meaning which constrains what the expression can be used to refer to. For
example, A reply from an interlocutor such as That's a lie or That's not true,
targets the descriptive meaning within a statement. (ibid)

Attributive meaning is the meaning that an adjective gives to a noun. It is a type

of descriptive meaning, but it is specifically concerned with the qualities or
properties of a noun. For example, in the sentence "The red ball is rolling," the
adjective "red" gives the noun "ball" the attributive meaning of "having the color
red." (ibid)

7. Utterances, sentences, and propositions

These three terms are used to describe different levels of language. The most
concrete is utterance: utterances are real pieces of speech. Sentences, on the
other hand, are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances. In other
words, sentences are abstracted, or generalized, from actual language use. By
going on to filter out certain types of grammatical information, we can get to
propositions, which are descriptions of states of affairs and which some writers
see as a basic element of sentence meaning. for example, the difference between
active and passive sentences:

1. Caesar invaded Gaul.

1. Gaul was invaded by Caesar.

From a logician’s perspective, these sentences are equivalent, for whenever 1 is

true, so is 2. Thus, the grammatical differences between them will never be
significant in a chain of reasoning and can be ignored. (Saeed, 2016)

Utterance meaning is the totality of what the speaker intends to convey by

making an utterance, within certain necessary limits. It goes beyond the literal
meaning of the words spoken to include the speaker's intention, the context of the
utterance, and the shared knowledge between the speaker and hearer.
To take a very simple example, consider the following:

A: Have you cleared the table and washed the dishes?

B: I've cleared the table.

In normal circumstances, it would clearly be part of B's intended message that

s/he had not washed the dishes. (Cruse, 2000)

9
According to Lyons (2005), utterance meaning refers to spoken language (as also
are the words ‘discourse’ and ‘conversation’).

A sentence is a linguistic expression, a well-formed string of words, while an

utterance is a speech event by a particular speaker in a specific context. When a
speaker uses a sentence in a specific context, he produces an utterance. In other
words, the term sentence meaning refers to the semantic content of the sentence:
the meaning which derives from the words themselves, regardless of context. The
term utterance meaning refers to the semantic content plus any pragmatic
meaning created by the specific way in which the sentence gets used. For
example:
‘Have you already eaten?’ (tones not indicated)

The literal meaning (i.e., sentence meaning) of the question is, “Have you already
eaten or not?”, which sounds like a request for information. But its most common
use is as a greeting. The normal way for one friend to greet another is to ask this
question. (The expected reply is: “I have eaten,” even if this is not in fact true.)
In this context, the utterance meaning is roughly equivalent to that of the English
expressions hello or How do you do? In other contexts, however, the question
could be used as a real request for information. For example, if a doctor wants to
administer a certain medicine which cannot be taken on an empty stomach, he
might well ask the patient “Have you eaten yet?” In this situation the sentence
meaning and the utterance meaning would be essentially the same. (Kroger,
2022)

10
References

Cruse, A. (2006). A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University

Press.

Cruse, A. (2000). Meaning in language. Oxford University Press.

Crystal, D. (2008). (6th edition). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.

Blackwell Publishing

Kroger, P. (2022). 3rd edition. Analyzing Meaning: An Introduction to Semantics

and Pragmatics. Berlin: Language Science Press

Leech, J. (1985). 2nd Edition. Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Middlesex:

Penguin.

Lyons, J. (2005). Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

Palmer, F. (1981). 2nd edition. Semantics: A new Outline. Cambridge University

Press

Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Saeed, J. (2016). 4th Edition. Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing

Yule, G. (2020). (7th edition). The Study of Language. Cambridge University

Press.

11
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
University of Thi-Qar
College of Education for Humanities
Department of English

Word Meaning and Lexical Semantics

Supervised by :
Asst. Prof. Saddam Salim

Submitted by :
Ebtihal Hussein
Meqat Hussein
Saja Slama
1. Defining Word Meaning : A word is a linguistic unit that carries
meaning and is typically composed of one or more morphemes. It
represents a specific concept, object, action, or idea and serves as a
fundamental element of communication. Words can be identified and
listed in dictionaries or lexicons, and they can have different
grammatical forms while sharing the same semantic meaning. (Saeed,2016)

1.1 Distinctive features: feature semantics, semantic features are used as

meaning components. For instance, the lexemes in (1a) would receive a common
semantic feature FEMALE), those in (1b) receive the feature [MALE), while
neither feature is assigned to the expressions in (1c).(Lobner,2013)
1-

The features (FEMALE] and [MALE] are not just different, but complementary.
We can therefore replace them with one binary feature, either [FEMALE) or
(MALE), that assumes the value + or the value -. For the sake of brevity and
male chauvinism, the (MALE] variant is chosen.' The general feature (MALE] is
written [ ‡ MALE] or just [MALE), the fact that the feature has the value + or - is
indicated by [+MALE] and [-MALE, respectively. The term feature is used for
both features without a value ([MALEJ) and features with a value (I -MALE]).
The words in (1) share the property of denoting persons. This can be captured by
another feature [+ HUMAN] that distinguishes them from the terms in (2). (We
assume the primary animal readings of the terms.)

2-

1
1.2 Prototypes: The notion of prototypes, proposed by Deeply and Mervis
(1975), Rosch, (1976), and Mervis and Rosch (1981), suggests that concepts
have central or typical members within a category, with shading off into less
typical or peripheral members. For example, a chair is a more central member of
the category FURNITURE than a lamp. This approach is supported by
experimental evidence showing that speakers tend to agree more readily on
typical members of a category and that these members come to mind more
quickly. (Riemer,2010)
Prototype theory allows for borderline uncertainty, where an item may resemble
two different prototypes. For example, a whale may be seen as resembling
different things of fish in some features while not being a typical member of the
category MAMMAL.
There are different interpretations of typicality effects in the psychology
literature. Some researchers argue that the central prototype is an abstraction,
represented by a set of characteristic features that real items are compared to.
Others propose that categories are organized based on exemplars, actual
memories of typical examples within a category. (ibid)

1.3 Exemplars
‘A theory of categorization in which categories are structured around a particular
example of the category as stored in long-term memory.’ (Riemer ,2010)
This means, the exemplar theory of categories is a theory about how humans
categorize things. It says that we categorize things by comparing them to
examples of things that we have seen before. In other words, exemplar theory
suggests that we categorize things by comparing them to examples of things that
we have seen before. The more similar a new thing is to the examples that we
have stored in our memory, the more likely we are to categorize it as the same
type of thing. For example, if we see a new bird, we might compare it to other
birds that we have seen before to decide what kind of animal it is.

2
Alternative Theories of Semantics
'Generative' and 'interpretive' approaches to semantics, both of which have
developed out of Transformational Grammar. These two schools of thought (or
rather, two variants of the same school) have made up one of the most influential
and productive sources of new ideas and insights in recent semantics.
(Leech,1985)
Generative semantics and interpretive semantics are labels used to describe
different approaches to the relationship between syntax (the structure of
sentences) and semantics (meaning). These labels emerged from the Standard
Theory of 1965, which is a theory of language that includes both phrase-structure
rules (rules that specify the form of sentence structures) and transformational
rules (rules that convert one sentence structure into another, such as active to
passive voice).
In the early days of transformational grammar, meaning was largely ignored, and
the focus was on generating grammatically correct sentences without much
consideration for their meaning. However, with the publication of Katz and
Fodor's article on semantics in (The structure of a semantic Theory 1963) the
importance of semantics transformational grammar went through a period of
conceding to semantics a more and more important position in linguistic started
to be recognized in linguistic theory. (ibid)
Interpretive semantics and generative semantics both emerged as responses to
this recognition. They differ in their approaches to the relationship between
syntax and semantics:
1. Interpretive Semantics: This approach emphasizes the role of semantics in
interpreting sentences. It focuses on how the meaning of a sentence is derived
from its syntactic structure. It seeks to explain how different sentence structures
contribute to the overall meaning of a sentence.
2. Generative Semantics: This approach views syntax and semantics as
interconnected and mutually influencing components of language. It argues that
the meaning of a sentence is not derived solely from its syntactic structure but
also from a set of underlying semantic representations. Generative semantics
proposes that these semantic representations are generated by rules that interact
with the syntactic rules of transformational grammar. (ibid)

3
This diagram presented outlines the essential connection between meanings and
sounds in a comprehensive linguistic theory. It emphasizes the significance of the
syntactic component as the origin of both sound and meaning derivation. The
Standard Theory, discussed in the diagram, asserts that the surface structure of
syntax is the primary level relevant to phonetic interpretation, while the deep
structure is the primary level relevant to semantic interpretation. Transformations
in this theory are considered meaning-preserving, meaning they do not change
the meaning of the structures they operate on. However, an alternative
perspective emerged that challenged the interpretive position of the Standard
Theory. Scholars such as Chomsky (1970) and Jackendoff (1972) proposed that
certain aspects of meaning, particularly those related to negation, quantification,
and focus, were more directly connected to surface structure rather than deep
structure. They suggested that "projection rules" for specifying meaning should
operate on surface structures, possibly at intermediate stages of transformational
derivation. This modification led to the idea that sentences with the same deep
structures do not necessarily have the same meaning. (ibid)

The revised view, known as Extended Standard Theory, incorporates the notion
of an interpretive semantic component. The meaning of a sentence is determined
by applying semantic rules to a syntactic base. The diagram represents this
revised perspective, illustrating the inclusion of Projection rules,
(are a set of rules in syntax that describe how the structure of a sentence is
derived from its constituent parts. These rules specify how smaller units, such as
words or phrases combine to form larger units

4
(e.g. sentence consists of a noun phrase (NP) followed by a verb phrase (VP).
This rule allows for the combination of a subject (NP) with a predicate (VP) to
form a complete sentence) operating on surface structures and potentially at
intermediate points in the transformational derivation. It also includes
phonological and phonetic interpretation through phonological rules. (ibid)

The generative- Interpretive controversy

The Generative-Interpretive Controversy revolves around the question of
directionality in linguistic analysis and its implications. The dispute is not about
the inherent properties of language itself, but rather about how linguists choose to
formulate rules.
Generativists generally maintain that transformational rules do not change
meaning. However, this principle faced significant criticism from interpretivists.
Factors such as the scope of negation and quantification were shown to be
influenced by surface syntactic ordering and constituent structure. Other
phenomena related to scope, focus, and emphasis, such as the scope of adverbs
like "only" and "even," were also affected by surface structures. Additionally,
generativists encountered difficulties maintaining their principle due to the
insertion of lexical items at various points during transformational derivation,
rather than at a single point before the derivation begins. Arguments were made
to demonstrate that certain transformations must precede lexical insertion,
suggesting that lexical insertion rules were a subset of transformations. However,
these transformations often appeared to change meaning due to historical and
idiosyncratic influences on the meanings of lexical items. This presented a
challenge when applying rules derived from other sentences to words such as
"helpful," "dreadful," "hateful," etc.
On the other side, generativists focused their criticism on the interpretive
position's claim that there exists a valid level of linguistic abstraction known as
deep syntactic structure. According to the Standard Theory, deep structure serves
multiple functions, including the insertion of lexical items, defining
subcategorization relations, serving as the starting point for transformational
rules, and defining concepts like "Subject" and "Object." However, there were
arguments challenging the existence of a single level with all these properties. It
was shown that selection restrictions are semantic rather than syntactic, casting
doubt on the subcategorization function of deep structure. Generativists also
argued that the same rules needed to operate both before and after lexical
insertion, suggesting that interpretivists dealt with the same phenomena in two
5
different ways—projection rules for pre-insertion and transformations for post-
insertion. Therefore, according to generativists, interpretive semantics failed to
recognize generalizations about transformational processes by insisting on
separate level of lexical insertion prior to transformations. (ibid)

A Multiple-based Model
The alternative theory proposed is a multiple-based model that seeks to
incorporate advantages from both generative and interpretive approaches. It
suggests a three-component model of language: semantics, syntax, and
phonology. The model introduces expression rules that translate semantic
representations into syntactic representations, and vice versa, without assuming a
strict directional precedence. These rules are distinct from transformational rules,
which operate on syntactic representations for thematic or stylistic arrangement.
(ibid)
The model also proposes a separate dependency structure for semantics, aligning
with the generative concept of a semantic base. In contrast, the interpretive
semantic model considers semantic representations as configurations of markers
or features derived from syntactic constituent structures. Regarding the lexicon or
dictionary, the model suggests that each lexical entry consists of three
specifications: morphological, syntactic, and semantic. It also introduces a
separate morpheme index responsible for phonologically interpreting stems and
affixes identified in the morphological specifications. These views deviate from
transformational positions, where lexical entries typically consist of semantic,
syntactic, and phonological specifications.
The multiple-based model is depicted as a diagram with various levels of
representation, including deep semantics, surface semantics, deep syntax, surface
syntax, deep phonology, and surface phonology. The model emphasizes a
symmetry in the overall structure of language and shares similarities with non-
transformational models that view language as a tiered structure of
interconnected strata or coding systems.

6
In Justification of a Multiple-based Model
it is necessary to clarify the main issues of such a debate. (a) From the
interpretive point of view, all conceptual meaning is specified in the semantic
representation, and that there is no need to allow for the intro- duction of new
factors of meaning by the rules mapping that representation on to surface syntax.
The factors of meaning usually associated with surface syntax are those
involving scope or focus.
(b) From the generative point of view, Leech justifies the existence of a level of
'Deep Syntax' intermediate between (surface) semantic representations and
surface syntactic representations. (Leech here, for convenience, adopt the
transformationalist's conventional assumption that surface syntax is derived from
deeper levels, rather than vice versa: that is, Leech discusses the mappings
between levels in terms of a speaker's model (meaning-to-sound) rather than a
hearer's model (sound-to- meaning).) The 'Deep Syntax' level has already been
defined as a level (a) at which lexical insertion takes place; (b) at which syntactic
sub- categorization is introduced; (c) which is the input to syntactic trans-
formations. There are a number of arguments which can be used in support of a
'deep syntactic' level, and more generally, in support of the linguistic model:
1. Independent Well-formedness Conditions in Syntax: Separate conditions of
well-formedness in semantics and syntax are proposed, indicating that conceptual
meaning and surface syntax have distinct requirements.
2. A Single Level of Lexical Insertion: Lexical insertion rules are different from
syntactic transformational rules and should capture both the creative potential
and limited productivity of the lexicon. The proposed model recognizes the
separate nature of lexical rules and syntactic rules.
3. Anaphoric Islands: Certain linguistic units behave as "islands" for anaphora or
discourse reference. This phenomenon can be accounted for by separating the
semantic and syntactic representations of lexical items, where anaphoric
reference is a syntactic process.
4. The Need for Distinct Semantic and Syntactic Categories: Syntactic categories
and semantic categories are distinct, and there needs to be a mapping of semantic
categories onto syntactic categories. The proposed model acknowledges the
distinction between syntactic and semantic categories and provides a framework
for their mapping.
5. The Suspect Nature of Some Transformational Rules: Certain transformational
rules in generative grammar, such as, predicate raising, and quantifier lowering,
have been criticized for lacking syntactic motivation.

7
6. Transformations as "Structure Preserving": The notion of "structure-
preserving" transformations, where the changes made to sentence structure result
in well-formed structures according to the base rules, aligns with the proposed
model's distinction between syntactic and semantic well-formedness.
These arguments collectively support the idea of a deep syntactic level
emphasizes the separation of semantic and syntactic representations while
accounting for the relationship between them. (ibid)

Semantics Today
In recent years, the field of semantics has seen diverse developments and varying
perspectives. No longer aligned with the Standard Theory, Chomsky's Revised
Extended Standard Theory has shifted the relationship between syntax and
semantics. According to this view, the meaning of a sentence is derived from its
surface structure rather than its deep structure. Deep structure, now referred to as
the "Initial Phrase Marker," serves as the input for transformational processes but
no longer directly determines semantic interpretation.

This diagram introduces a change in terminology, replacing "semantic

interpretation" with "logical form." Chomsky argues that logical form captures
aspects of meaning determined by grammatical structure without providing a
complete semantic representation. He further suggests that semantics cannot be
fully integrated into sentence grammar and proposes that the structures of formal
grammar are generated independently, with associations between these structures
and semantic interpretations governed by broader semiotic principles and rules.
8
Additionally, Chomsky acknowledges that phonetic interpretation may be
influenced, at least in part, by the deep structure, challenging the traditional
understanding of deep and surface structure. The concept of a trace theory of
syntax is introduced, where elements deleted by transformations are still
represented in surface structure through variables called traces (marked as 't'), for
example: ( Who did john see t). These traces help preserve certain characteristics
of deep structure in surface structure and even in phonetic interpretation.
In terms of other developments in theoretical semantics, it is challenging to
provide generalizations. Some researchers, like J. J. Katz, continue to work
within the framework of the Standard Theory. Others who previously supported
generative semantics have moved away from formal theorizing and are focusing
on descriptive problems of meaning. Notable developments include Fillmore's
exploration of meaning in relation to "scenes" and Lakoff's investigation of the
metaphorical foundations of meaning. Both approaches draw on Eleanor Rosch's
concept of prototypes and reject the notion, opposed to Chomsky's view, that
meaning can be easily separated from other aspects of cognition.
These current differences still reflect a basic tension between semantic
viewpoints which are primarily influenced by philosophical logic, and those
primarily influenced by cognitive psychology. (ibid)

9
References
Leech, J. (1985). 2nd Edition. Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Middlesex:
Penguin.
Saeed, J. (2016). 4th Edition. Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Löbner, S. (2013). Understanding Semantics. London: Routledge.

10
[1]
INTRODUCTION
Language is a complex system, and understanding how words
relate to each other is crucial for effective communication. In this
assignment, we will describe a fascinating topic called "lexical
relations. Lexical relations are the connections between words and the
different ways they relate to each other. By studying these
relationships, we can uncover patterns and categories that help us
make sense of language. We will examine various types of lexical
relations, such as words with similar meanings (synonyms), opposite
meanings (antonyms), words that are part of a bigger category
(hyponyms), words that are part of a whole (meronyms), words that
sound the same but mean different things (homonyms), and words
with multiple meanings (polysemy). By understanding these types of
relations, we can gain insights into how words work together and how
they contribute to the richness and structure of language.

[2]
1.LEXICAL RELATIONS
Lexical relations are the relationships between the meanings of
words. They are an important part of lexical semantics, the study of
word meaning. Lexical relations can be used to describe how words
are related to each other in terms of their meaning, and they can be
used to help us to understand the meaning of words and expressions.

Bolinger (1968:11) says: “Lexical relations are relationships of

the meanings of words to other words.” Lyons (1977:57) states:
“Meaning property is one of several features or other components
which together can be said to make up the meanings of a word or
utterance.” All lexical relations and meaning properties can be
distinguished by examining language use. There are many kinds of
semantic/lexical relations, which can be distinguished by their use in
any text or context. The types and functions of lexical relations
include synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, polysemy, hyponymy,
metonymy and collocation.

1.1 TPYES OF LEXICAL RELATIONS

According to Palmer (1976), there are five main types of lexical
relations: hyponym, synonymy, antonym, polysemy, and homonymy.

1.1.1 HYPONYMY
According to Saeed (2009), hyponymy is a relation of inclusion.
A hyponym includes the meaning of a more general word. For
example, "dog" and "cat" are hyponyms of "animal" because the
meaning of "dog" includes the meaning of "animal," and the meaning
of "cat" includes the meaning of "animal too. (Saeed, 2009, p. 69).
Yule (2010) states: "when the meaning of one form is included in
the meaning of another, the relationship is described as hyponymy".
[3]
Examples are the pairs: animal/dog, dog/poodle, flower/rose
(Yule,2010, p.118).
Hyponymy is a lexical relationship in English that can be
described using the phrase "kind/type/sort of." It involves a
hierarchical arrangement of elements, where each hyponym is a more
specific type or category of a broader term. For instance, a sports car
is a hyponym of a car because a sports car is a specific type of car.
Similarly, a car is a hyponym of a vehicle because a car falls under
the broader category of vehicles.
To determine hyponymy, a common identification procedure
relies on the concept of class-inclusion. According to this notion, A is
considered a hyponym of B if every instance of A is necessarily an
instance of B, but not vice versa. For example, every car is a vehicle,
but not every vehicle is a car. This is because there are other vehicles
like buses, motorbikes, and trucks that are not cars. Therefore, we can
conclude that "car" is a hyponym of "vehicle."(Riemer, 2010).

1.1.2 SYNONYMY
According to Löbner (2013) synonyms are “two expressions are
synonymous if they have the same meaning.” (Löbner ,2013,p.03)
Palmer(198 )defined synonymy as it is used to mean “sameness of
meaning”. Palmer(1981,59 )
According to Saeed (2016,61) “Synonyms are different phonological
words that have the same or very similar meanings”.
Some examples might be the pairs below:
couch/sofa, lawyer/attorney, large/big

We should keep in our mind that the idea of “sameness” of

meaning used in discussing synonym is not necessarily “total
sameness”, There are many cases of partial synonym. Two lexemes
may have one or more meaning variants in common, For example,
the words "hide" and "conceal" in English have similar meanings, but
[4]
 they are not exactly the same. Another example of partial synonymy
is seen in the words "spectacles" and "glasses," which both refer to
objects worn on the nose for vision. However, "glasses" can also be
the plural form of "glass" in another meaning(Löbner,2013, p.204).
In everyday language, the term "synonymy" is commonly used to
dscribe pairs of expressions that can have the same meaning in
specific situations.This non-technical notion of synonymy is based on
the way that words and phrases are used (i.e., their denotations), rather
than on their true meanings (i.e., their conceptual meanings). Words
that are commonly considered to be synonyms may only be equivalent
in certain contexts, rather than having the same meaning in all
contexts. When tested in different contexts, potential synonyms will
likely match in some situations but not in others. For instance, it is
easy to imagine scenarios where the word "glasses" can be replaced
with "spectacles." However, there are also cases where this
substitution is not possible, such as saying "she drank two glasses" but
not "she drank two spectacles of orange juice."(ibid).

1.1.3 ANTONYMY
Antonymy is the oppositeness of the meaning, For instance
"dead" and "alive", "hot" and "cold", and "above" and
"below".(Palmer,1981, p.78-79). According to Löbner (2013, p.209)
antonyms are Two expressions are antonymous if they express two
opposite extremes out of a range of possibilities.
There is a primary distinction between gradable and non-
gradable antonyms that should be illustrated when discussing the
concept of antonymy. Non-gradable antonyms are pairs of words that
don't have a middle point or degree of intensity, such as male-female
or pass-fail. Asserting one of these words automatically implies the
denial of the other. For example, if someone is female, they cannot be
male, and if someone fails an exam, they haven't passed it.
On the other hand , gradable antonyms are pairs of words that
possess contrasting meanings but can be modified to varying degrees.
[5]
This implies the existence of intermediate points on a scale between
the two meanings, including a middle point.
For instance, consider the gradable antonyms "hot" and "cold." These
words allow for various degrees of modification. Something can be
mildly warm, extremely hot, or intensely cold. There isn't a precise
threshold at which something definitively transitions from being "hot"
to "cold."(Riemer,2010, p.137).
There is a third type of antonyms referred to as "Reverses."
These antonyms describe the relationship between terms that depict
movement, where one term signifies movement in a particular
direction (→), while the other term represents movement in the
opposite direction (←). For example, the terms push and pull on a
swing door indicate the direction in which force should be exerted.
Other similar pairs include come/go, go/return, and ascend/descend.
When describing motion, the following pairs can be identified as
reverses: (go) up/down, (go) in/out, and (turn) right/left (Saeed,2016,
p.64).

1.1.4 METONYMY
Löbner (2013) defined metonymy as a “term that primarily refers
to objects of a certain kind is used to refer instead to things that
belong to objects of this kind.” (Löbner, 2013,52) Metonymy is a
figure of speech in which one thing is referred to by the name of
something else that is closely related to it. For example, the phrase
"the White House" is a metonymy for the US government.
Metonymy is a figure of speech that relies on the close
association between terms, such as cause and effect, possessor and
possessed, and various other connections. The key concept in
metonymy is contiguity, which suggests that the things involved in a
metonymic relationship are either conceptually or physically adjacent
to each other. This adjacency can be understood in terms of their
proximity in the real world or their conceptual connection.
Here are some examples:
[6]
 a. Moscow has rejected the demands.
b. The kettle is boiling.
c. This cinema complex has seven screens.
d. I saw the doctor today.
e. My bags were destroyed by customs.
In (a) we understand that Moscow refers to the Russian government.
In(b) it isn’t the kettle itself, but the water inside it, which is boiling.
In (c) the cinema is not claimed to just have seven screens: the
speaker means that it has seven separate auditoriums, each with its
own screen.In (d) the speaker does not mean that they just saw the
doctor: they mean that they consulted the doctor. In (e) it was not just
the bags, but their contents as well which were destroyed.

In all these examples the high- lighted word expresses something

associated with its literal meaning: in(a), a place stands for one of its
salient institutions (the Russian government), in (b) the container
stands for the contents, in (e) the container stands for the container
and the contents, and in (c) an important part of the auditorium stands
for the whole auditorium. Example (d) is the verbal equivalent of (c):
one event, seeing, stands for the wider event of which it is part:
having a medical appointment (Riemer,2010, p.249-250).

1.1.5 HYOMONYMY
Homonyms (from Greek ‘same name’) are unrelated senses of the
same phonological word.(Saeed, 2009, p. 64) In other words, the
same word has different meanings. Riemer, (2010).
1) lexemes of the same syntactic category, and with the same
spelling: e.g. lap ‘circuit of a course’ and lap ‘part of body when
sitting down’;
2) The same category, but different spelling: e.g. the verbs ring and
wring;
3) Different categories, but with the same spelling: e.g. the verb keep
and the noun keep;
[7]
4) Different categories, and with different spelling: e.g. not, knot.
(ibid)
Sebastian Löbner refers to the phenomenon of homonymy as
hyonomy. He gives the following example of two words that
accidentally came to have the same meaning:
Bank (financial institution) comes from the Italian word "banca,"
meaning "bench."
Bank (side of a river) comes from the Old English word "banc,"
meaning "ridge."
Over time, the two words came to be pronounced the same, even
though they had different origins and meanings.(Löbner, 2013).
Rimer calls the process by which two or more words that are not
related in origin or meaning come to have the same form
coincidental convergence. The term accurately describes the process
by which two unrelated words happen to converge on the same form.
Other examples of homonymy are pupil (student; part of the
eye); mole (an animal, a small dark mark on the skin, a stone wall
built in the sea); bill ( a bird’s mouth, a statement of charges, a
proposed law, a bank note); ball (any solid or hollow sphere as used
in games, social gathering for dancing); and miss (failure to hit, a title
given to an unmarried woman or girl).

1.1.6 POLYSMY
Löbner defined polysemy as “A lexeme is polysemous if it has
two or more interrelated meanings”. (Löbner, 2013, p. 45)
Löbner emphasizes that the different meanings of a polysemous word
must be interrelated. This means that the meanings must be connected
in some way, either semantically, etymologically, or culturally. He
mentioned as an example:
The adjective "heavy" has multiple interrelated meanings, including:
* Having a great mass or weight
* Difficult to bear or endure
* Important or significant
[8]
 These meanings are interrelated because they all have to do with the
idea of something that is difficult or weighty. Saeed (2009) discusses
the traditional distinction in lexicology between homonymy and
polysemy, particularly in the context of dictionary design.
Both homonymy and polysemy involve multiple senses of the
same word, but the key distinction lies in whether these senses are
judged to be related. Lexicographers, who compile dictionaries, make
a crucial distinction between these two where polysemous senses are
grouped under a single lexical entry, while homonymous senses are
given separate entries. Lexicographers often use the criterion of
"relatedness" to determine polysemy. This can be based on speakers'
intuitions and knowledge of the historical development of
words.(Saeed, 2009)
Determining whether senses are related can be subjective, with
speakers' intuitions sometimes conflicting. Historical facts and
speaker intuitions may not always align. For example, words like
"sole" (bottom of the foot, flatfish) are historically related but are
treated as homonyms due to speakers' intuitions.(ibid)
Polysemy deals with constructions that have multiple meanings;
for example, “head,”, “over,” or, “letter,” can all adopt multiple
meanings. These words could be considered polysemous since they
each have many potential meanings.
The word “head” can be used to refer to the top of someone’s
body: “Jane received a head injury”; it can be used to refer to the
front of a line: “Jane is at the head of the line”. It can also be used to
refer to how prepared someone is: “Jane is way ahead of the curve,
she already read the chapter for next week”.
So, the word “head” is polysemous since it has many meanings (Yule,
1996). Other examples:

Back of: human, a chair, a sofa, a knife, etc.

Eye of: human, a needle; hook and, etc.
Foot of: human, a bed, a hill, a mountain, etc.
[9]
1.1.7 PROTOTYPES
According to Yule (2010), prototypes are the most typical members
of a category. In other words, prototypes are the best examples of a
category. They are the first things that come to mind when we think
of the category, and they are the most likely members of the category
to be agreed upon by everyone.
For example, the prototype of the category "bird" is likely to be a
robin or a sparrow. These are the most typical members of the
category "bird," and they are the most likely members of the
category to be agreed upon by everyone. (ibid)
Prototypes consistent with prototype theory, a model of how people
categorize things based on their similarity to a prototype. Eleanor
Rosch is credited with developing prototype theory in the 1970s. Her
research showed that people categorize things based on their
similarity to a prototype, rather than on a set of necessary and
sufficient conditions.(Riemer, 2010)
Rosch's research also showed that prototype effects are not limited to
specific categories, but can be found in a wide range of categories,
such as animals, furniture, and colors. For example, Rosch found that
people were more likely to agree that a sparrow is a bird than a
penguin is a bird. This is because a sparrow is a more prototypical
member of the category "bird" (feathers, wings, ability to fly).(ibid)

Prototypes play an important role in default reasoning, which is

reasoning based on assumptions that replace specific information
when it is not available. The default reasoning is when we hear a
general term, such as "bird" or "car," we think of a typical example
of that category. For example, when Mary tells John, "Look, there's
a bird on the window sill," John will think of a typical bird, such as a
robin or a sparrow, not an owl, a condor, an ostrich, or a penguin.
Similarly, when someone mentions a "car," we will not think of a
truck or a vintage car. (Löbner, 2013)
[10]
Although it is inaccurate to use general terms for non-typical cases, it
is not incorrect according to the rules of language. Penguins are
birds, so we can refer to them as birds in certain contexts. For
example, the following sentences are perfectly acceptable:
The only birds that live in the Antarctic are penguins.
Penguins come ashore to nest.The birds lay one to three eggs.

In these sentences, the word "birds" refers to penguins, even though

penguins are not the most typical members of the bird category.
However, the sentences are in appropriate contexts, and we know
that penguins are birds. Therefore, we assume that the speaker or
writer is referring to penguins when they say "birds" (ibid)

1.1.8 COLLOCATION
Collocation in language (spoken or written) is a combination of
two or more words that have strong relationship to infer new phrasal
meaning. For instance: strong winds, bright future, lion den, etc. This
lexical relation, widely spreads among native speakers of most
languages.
Using collocation makes a language more natural and easily
understood, where alternative and rich expressions are used. It is
easy for a speaker to remember such a word when she/he says its
accordant one, then, the language is used as in blocks rather than as
single words.
In English language, grammatically, parts of speech play big role in
words combination that make up collocation. But, the types of words
are used still have a finite set of rules and do not permit any other
particular set. The following table illustrates some common patterns
of words combination according to the parts of speech in English
language, McCarthy and O'Dell (2017: 6-12).
[11]
 No. Parts of speech Examples
1 adjective + noun deep sleep, fast speed
2 noun + noun dog bite, bar of soap
3 noun + verb Plane toke off
4 verb + noun give a speech, do homework
5 adverb + adjective fully wise
6 adverb + noun proudly smile

It is, well worth, mentioning that Arabic language is fully rich of

collocations. Expressions such as: tongue slip, friend misstep, white
page, so on. are widely used among Iraqi communities.

[12]
2. LEXICAL AMBIGUITY AND VAGUENESS
Lobener's definition of vagueness is "A lexical meaning is vague
if it allows for flexible adaptation to the given context of use"(Löbner,
2013, p. 47) In simpler words, a vague word is one that can have
different meanings depending on the situation in which it is used.
Lobener (2013) argues that vagueness is a common and efficient
feature of language. It allows us to communicate about a wide range of
concepts without having to create a separate word for every possible
meaning. For example, the word "baby" can be used to refer to a child
of any age, from a newborn to a toddler. The exact age that is
considered to be a "baby" will vary depending on the culture and the
context in which the word is used.
Vagueness is observed in concepts related to properties on a
continuous scale such as color terms like 'red' are considered vague
because we perceive the range of colors as a continuum with fuzzy
transitions. Whether something is 'big' or 'good' is described as a
matter of degree, making gradable adjectives (with comparative and
superlative forms) inherently vague.(ibid)
Vagueness may occur in combination with polysemy. For
example, the word "light" can have different meanings depending on
the scale that is being used. It can mean "low in weight" (a light
feather), "easy to do" (a light task), or "not serious or important" (a
light matter). Each of these meanings is vague, as there is no clear-cut
definition of what constitutes "light" on each scale. (ibid)
Therefore, vagueness refers to a lack of clarity in meaning. A word or
phrase is vague if its boundaries are not well-defined or if it has
imprecise meaning.
There are different types of ambiguities in language, including lexical,
syntactic, grammatical, and contextual ambiguities. Lobener focuses
on these four types of ambiguities in his work.
Lexical ambiguity: occurs when a word or phrase has more than one
possible meaning. For example, the word "bank" can refer to the side
of a river or a financial institution. "Open another window" can have
[13]
multiple meanings if the word "window" is ambiguous, for instance,
referring to a computer screen. (Löbner, 2013)
Syntactic ambiguity: occurs when the structure of a sentence allows
for multiple interpretations. For example, the sentence "The old man
the boat" can be interpreted as "The old man owns the boat" or "The
boat is old." Another example is "She met the man with her friend" or
"Flying planes can be dangerous" can be interpreted in multiple ways
due to structural ambiguity. (ibid)
Grammatical ambiguity: occurs when a grammatical form, such as a
verb tense or noun case, has multiple possible meanings. For example,
the past tense form "were" can have a past tense meaning in one
context (e.g., "I knew you were here") and a conditional reading in
another (e.g., "I wish you were here").(ibid)
Contextual ambiguity: occurs when the meaning of a word or phrase
depends on the context in which it is used. For example, in the
sentence "I don’t need your bicycle," the word "bicycle" could refer to
the two-wheeled vehicle or to a playing card with an image of a
bicycle. The appropriate interpretation depends on the broader
context.(ibid:49)
Saeed distinguished between ambiguity and vagueness,
highlighting the challenges in determining which linguistic examples
fall into each category. In examples of vagueness, context can provide
additional information not explicitly specified in the sense. for
example: If a term is vague, such as "big" or "good," the specific
degree of bigness or goodness may be clarified by the context.
In examples of ambiguity, context plays a role in selecting one of the
possible senses or meanings. Example: The word "bat" may have
multiple meanings (an animal or a sports equipment), and the context
helps determine which sense is intended.(Saeed, 2009, p. 61)

[14]
CONCLUSION
This assignment has explored the fascinating topic of lexical
relations and the various types of relationships that exist
between words in a language. Lexical relations play a crucial
role in understanding the structure, meaning, and usage of
words, and they provide insights into the intricate web of
connections within a language's lexicon. Throughout this
assignment , several fundamental types of lexical relations have
examined , including synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy,
meronymy, prototype, collocations, and homonymy. Synonymy
refers to words that share similar meanings, while antonymy
involves words with opposite meanings. Hyponymy refers to
the hierarchical relationship between words, where one word is
more specific than another. Meronymy, on the other hand,
deals with the part-whole relationship between words. Lastly,
homonymy describes words that are spelled or pronounced
alike but have different meanings, a prototype refers to a
typical or representative example that embodies the essential
features or characteristics of a category or concept, collocation
refers to the habitual or natural pairing of words that frequently
occur together in a language.
By studying these lexical relations, linguists gain a deeper
understanding of how words are interconnected and how they
contribute to the overall structure and meaning of a language.
Lexical relations also have practical implications in various
domains, such as lexicography, natural language processing,
and language learning.

[15]
 REFERENCES

[1] Bolinger, D. (1968). Aspects of language. 3rd Ed. New York:

Harcourt, Brace & World.
[2] Löbner, S. (2013). Understanding semantics. 2nd Ed. London:
Routledge.
[3] Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics (2 vols.). New York, Cambridge
University Press.
[4] McCarthy M. and O'Dell M. (2017) English Collocations in Use.
Cambridge University Press. 2nd Ed.
[5] Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics. 2nd Ed. New York, Cambridge
University Press.
[6] Saeed, J. (2016). Semantics. 4th Ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
[7] Yule, G. (2006). The study of language. 3rd Ed. New York,
Cambridge University Press.

[16]
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research,
University of Thi-Qar
College of Education for Humanities
Department of English

Sentence Meaning
(Lexical meaning , grammatical
Meaning,Compositionality Principle and Projection
Rules)

Supervised By:
Asst. Prof. Saddam Salim

Prepared by:
1-Iman kaduim
2-Fatim Jabbar

MA Course
2023-2024

0
 1.1 Introduction
Language is a complex system of communication that relies on
various levels of meaning to convey information. Among these levels
are lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. Lexical meaning, on the
one hand, refers to the core meaning associated with individual words or
lexical units in a language. It involves the specific concepts and ideas
that a word represents. Lexical meaning is inherent in each word and
plays a significant role in determining the semantic of a sentence. For
example, the word "cat" has a lexical meaning that includes the concept
of a small domestic feline animal. While Grammatical meaning, in
contrast to lexical meaning, is concerned with the structural and
relational aspects of language. It focuses on the function of words, their
role in sentence structure, and how they interact with other words to
convey meaning.

1.2 Sentence Meaning

The study of sentence meaning is primarily concerned with the
process of deriving the meaning of a sentence from the meanings of its
individual words and the arrangement of sentence structure. Word
meanings are a matter of knowledge acquisition and then store
information . Within the cognitive realm, there exists a comprehensive
lexicon housing the multitude of words known to humans, each with its
associated meaning, readily accessible for use. These stored meanings
are referred to as lexical meanings (Löbner, 2013).
Furthermore, sentence meaning involves a compositional
structure. It shows a hierarchical composition, where in the meaning of
a sentence arises from the meanings of its constituent clauses and their
connecting elements. The meaning of a clause, in turn, is derived from
the meanings of its elements phrases, which are composed of the
meanings of their constituent words, which, finally, originate from the
meanings of their lexical units and morphemes, often referred to as
semantic primitives. Sentence meaning is the meaning of a group of
words arranged in a particular order . (Davis and Gillon, 2004).

1
 1.2.1 Lexical Meaning
Lexical words have a concrete meaning ,are easily defined ,and
generally are nouns ,verbs ,adjectives and adverbs. The concept of
"lexical meaning" should include the meanings of complex words,
regardless of whether they conform to regular or irregular semantic
patterns. This aligns with the "dynamic" perspective of the lexicon,
which views it not only as a repository of established entries but also as
a system comprising elements for the construction of novel words and
their associated meanings. Lexical meaning concerns to the meanings
of individual words or terms within a language. Lexical meaning is
dominant in content words. Lexical meaning pertains to the meanings
of individual words or terms within a language. Lexical meaning is the
meaning of a word or lexeme (a meaningful unit of language ,such as a
word ,phrase ,or idiom) as it appears in a dictionary(Löbner, 2013).

1.2.2 Grammatical Meaning

Grammatical meaning, also known as syntactic meaning, is a
linguistic concept that relates to the role that words, phrases, and
structures play in the overall structure and organization of a language.
It concerns to how words and their arrangements convey information
about the relationships between different elements in a sentence,
allowing for the construction of coherent and meaningful sentences.
In summary, grammatical meaning in language is about how the
structure, order, and form of words and phrases convey information
about their relationships and functions within a sentence, ensuring that
language is both meaningful and comprehensible (Löbner,2013) .The
concept of grammatical meaning involves multiple linguistic facets,
which include:

Word Order: The arrangement of words in a sentence varies across

languages, and it serves to convey grammatical nuances. For instance,
in English, the distinct meanings of "The cat chased the dog" and "The
dog chased the cat" result from differences in word order.

2
Parts of Speech: Words in a language are classified into categories
known as parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs. Each part of speech adheres to specific grammatical rules and
carries its own semantic significance.

Tense and Aspect: Verb conjugation and tense markers indicate the
timing of an action concerning the present, past, or future. For
example, "I am eating" (present progressive) conveys a different
temporal aspect than "I ate" (simple past).

Mood and Modality: Grammatical structures can express the mood

(indicative, imperative, subjunctive) and modality (possibility,
necessity, probability) of a statement. For instance, "You should
study" expresses a modal suggestion, while "Study!" takes on an
imperative mood, issuing a command.

Agreement: Certain languages require an agreement between words

within a sentence, such as subject-verb agreement. In Spanish, for
instance, (I speak) and (you speak) demonstrate concordance between
the subject pronoun and the verb.

Grammatical Cases: In languages like Latin or Russian, the endings of

nouns and pronouns change to signify their grammatical roles in a
sentence, such as the subject, object, or possession.

Word Inflection: Inflection in languages involves changing the form

of words to convey grammatical information. For instance, appending
"-ed" to the verb "walk" in English transforms it into "walked,"
indicating past tense (Saeed,2009 and Palmer ,1981).

Word Agreement: is the rule that says that words in a sentence must
agree with each other in number( singular and plural) and person (first
, second ,or third).For example: The dog barks.

Gender: In linguistic context, gender refers to a grammatical feature

that categorizes nouns, pronouns, and occasionally other words into
3
different classes, often labeled as masculine, feminine, neuter, or other
classifications. Gender is a grammatical concept and does not
necessarily align with the biological or societal notion of gender.
While not all languages incorporate gender, those that do find it
significantly influential in shaping their language structure and
grammar.
Comprehending the grammatical import of words and structures is of
paramount importance for effective communication and
comprehension in a language. It enables speakers and writers to
convey precise information and ensure the grammatical correctness
and meaningfulness of their sentences(ibid)

1.2.3 compositionality Principle

It states that the meaning of a complex expression is determined
by the meanings of its element expressions and the rules used to
combine them. In other words, the meaning of a whole is a function of
the meaning of its parts .The principle of compositionality has a
number of important implications. First, it allows us to understand the
meaning of an infinite number of sentences from a finite set of words
and rules. Second, it provides a way to model the meaning of sentences
in a formal and systematic way. Third, it allows us to relate the
meaning of the sentence to their syntactic structure. It is not without
its challenges. For example, there are cases where the meaning of a
whole is not simply a function of the meanings of its parts. For
example, the meaning of the sentence "The old man boat" is
ambiguous, even though the meanings of the individual words are
clear. This is because the syntactic structure of the sentence allows for
two possible interpretations: either the old man is the owner of the
boat, or the boat is old.
Another challenge for the principle of compositionality is the role of
pragmatics, or the context in which a sentence is used. For example,
the sentence "I'm hungry" can have different meanings depending on
the context in which it is used. If it is said in a restaurant, it is likely to
be a request for food. If it is said in a meeting, it may be an excuse to
leave .Despite these challenges, this principle remains a central
principle in semantics and related disciplines. It provides a powerful
framework for understanding the meaning of sentences and for
4
developing formal models of language meaning.(Lyons,2005)

1.2.4 Projection Rules

Projection rules involve a set of principles that contribute to the
structural organization and semantic interpretation of a sentence. They
form an integral part of the interpretation process, which can be
directly traced back to the syntactic structure of a sentence. These rules
are based on the grammatical classification of individual elements
within a sentence, guiding their combination, such as pairing
adjectives with nouns or noun phrases with verbs.
For illustrative purposes, Katz and Fodor use the sentence "The man
hit the colorful ball." To apply the projection rules, they initially
determine the grammatical classifications of lexical items, recognizing
"colorful" as an adjective and "ball" as a noun, thereby establishing
them as components of a noun phrase, among other classifications.
Subsequently, these rules combine the semantic paths of various
lexical items within the sentence.
This process begins with the items "colorful" and "ball." In one path
related to "colorful," a marker concerns to the actual color. However,
there exists an alternative path where the marker is evaluative,
addressing the notion that "colorful" refers to the aesthetically pleasing
quality of any object (Palmer, 1981). "Ball" presents three distinct
paths, one associated with the marker "Social activity." These paths
are then merged with the paths of "hit," which offers two distinct
routes, one indicating collision and the other signifying striking, both
situated within the "Physical object" environment.
Nonetheless, there will not be eight (two times four) derived paths, as
neither "colorful ball" will blend with the marker "Social activity" for
"hit" in either sense, given that this type of ball cannot be "hit" in either
sense of the word. As a result, only four possibilities will arise. Finally,
the path of "The man" (consisting of only one path) is combined,
ultimately leading four feasible interpretations for the sentence,
including colliding with or striking either an ordinary ball or a
cannonball (ibid.)
In more specific terms, projection rules address sentences such as
"*The idea cut the tree" or "*John drank the bread" by ascribing no
5
valid interpretations to them. These rules function by combining the
meanings of individual lexical items, with the combination process
termed "amalgamation," and the individual meanings referred to as
"paths". These paths essentially represent the structural analysis of
meaning, while amalgamation entails the merging of markers and
distinguishers.
To provide further clarity, the term "pregnant" is examined.
Following the procedure employed for "colorful ball," one might
assume that "pregnant" would only occur in the context of "(-male)"
to accommodate phrases like "pregnant woman," but not "pregnant
man." However, this rule does not account for instances like "pregnant
horse," even though "horse" is not marked as "(-male)." Furthermore,
"pregnant horse" clearly refers to a female creature and can be paired
with expressions like "gave birth." In this example, the "(-male)"
component arises from the adjective, not the noun, challenging the
rules, which do not easily accommodate such cases if they aim to
restrict "pregnant" to female nouns in general (ibid.)
In essence, the proposed framework introduces a set of rules for the
synthesis of meanings associated with individual lexical items. These
rules, designated as "projection rules," guide the process of
"amalgamation," and the resultant interpretations are represented as
"paths". These paths essentially encapsulate the structural analysis of
meaning, and amalgamation signifies the fusion of markers and
distinguishers (ibid).

1.3 Conclusion
In Conclusion, this paper discusses various aspects of linguistic
meaning, including sentence meaning, lexical meaning, grammatical
meaning, the compositionality principle, and projection rules. It
highlights the complex interplay between individual words and their
6
structural arrangement in forming the meaning of sentences. The
study of lexical meaning reveals the dynamic nature of words.
Grammatical meaning involves how the structure and form of words
convey relationships and functions within sentences, ensuring
effective communication. The compositionality principle emphasizes
that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the
meanings of its elements parts and their arrangement. Projection
rules are principles guiding the structural organization and semantic
interpretation of sentences, involving the amalgamation of meanings
associated with individual lexical items. These concepts collectively
contribute to a deeper understanding of the intricate nature of
language and how meaning is derived from its building blocks.

References
Davis, S. & Gillon, B. S. (Eds.). (2004). Semantics: A reader.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Löbner, S. (2013). Understanding semantics. London: Routledge.

7
Lyons, J.(2005).Linguistic semantics: An introduction. Cambridge
:Cambridge University press.

Palmer, F. (1981).2nd Edition. Semantics: A new Outline. Cambridge

University Press.

Saeed, J. I. (2009). 3rd Edition. Semantics .Oxford: John Wiley &

Sons.

8
University of Thi-Qar

College of Education for Humanities

Department of English

M.A. 1 st Course 2023-2024

Semantics

SENTENCE RELATIONS AND TRUTH

2
Supervised by:

Asst.prof .Saddam Salim

Presented by:
Shefaa Dakhil Khaiun
Zainab Jubeir
Noor Naji Saber

2023
2023 – 2024
– 2024
 INTRODUCTION

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and

sentences in natural languages. One of the main goals of
semantics is to explain how we can understand and
communicate with language, and how we can reason and argue
with language. To do this, semantics needs to account for the
relationship between language and the world. One way to
approach semantics is to use the notion of truth as a criterion for meaning.

This assignment attempts to discuss certain topics related to

semantic relations that may hold between sentences of a
language. such as Meaning , Propositional Content and Truth
which deals with how the meaning of a sentence can be
understood in terms of its truth conditions, that is, the states
under which the sentence is true or false. It also explores the
notion of propositional content, which is the abstract
representation of what a sentence expresses. Entailment
examines the truth of one sentence guarantees the truth of
another sentence .That is to say , one sentence related to the
other sentence in terms of its environment . Presupposition
studies the relation between sentences , when the speaker
assumes that the hearer knows what is talking about . Logical
operators and truth explore how logical operators such as “and”,
“or”, “not”, and “if … then” affect the truth value of sentences.
Possible world semantics assumes a way of analyzing the
meaning of sentences that involves modal expressions such as
“necessarily”, “possibly”, “must”, and “can”. It uses the idea of
possible worlds, which are alternative ways that reality could be,
to account for the varying degrees of truth or possibility of sentences.

1
1.1 LOGIC AND TRUTH
The study of logic derived from the Classical Greek civilization
, especially from Aristotle .The origins of logic can be traced
back to the search for the principles of good argument and
inference. If steps a and b are true then step c is also guaranteed
to be true. A part of this study is a concern for the truth of
statements and whether truth is preserved or lost by putting
sentences into different patterns. Here truth is taken to mean a
correspondence with facts, or in other words ,correct
descriptions of states of affairs in the world . In this case,
Language is interactional not intersectional one. (Saeed,2016).

For the most part this truth is said to be empirical (or

contingent), because we have to have some access to the facts of
the world to know whether a statement is true or not. Thus the
truth or otherwise of the sentence:
My father was the first man to visit Mars.
This sentence depends on facts about the life of the speaker's
father: If her father did go to Mars and was the first man there,
then the sentence is true; otherwise it is false.

Semanticists call a sentence’s being true or false as its truth-

value, and call the facts that would have to obtain in reality to
make a sentence true or false, its truth conditions. A simple
example of a linguistic effect on truth-value comes from
negating a sentence. If we have a statement in English like the
one below , adding not will reverse its truth-value:
Your car has been stolen.
Your car has not been stolen.

2
If a is true, b is false ; conversely, if a is false , b is true .To
demonstrate that this relationship holds true for any assertion ,
logicians use a schema , which is a conventional knowledge
structure that exists in memory, called logical form, where a
lower case letter (p, q, r, etc.) stands for the statement and a
special symbol ¬ for negation.
A truth value, where T represents 'true' and F represents 'false,'
can show the effect of negation on the truth-value of a
statement, as shown below.
p ¬p
TF
F T( Ibid).

1.2 PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT AND TRUTH

Proposition is what a declarative sentence expresses when it is
used to make a statement , that is, to say something, true or
false, about some external state of affairs. , depending on the
context ( linguistic context ) .
In the opposite direction, a declarative sentence is used when It
is said to convey a proposition when it is uttered to make a
statement. (Huang, 2014).

The propositional content of a sentence is that part of its

meaning that can be limited to a proposition .This concept
enables semanticists and pragmaticists to argue that different
(types of) sentences can have the same propositional content
while differing in other aspects of meaning . Consider the
interrogative sentence, Did Liszt adore Chopin? is said to have
the same propositional content as the active declarative sentence
Liszt adored Chopin , the passive declarative sentence Chopin
was adored by Liszt. The difference is that in saying (active
declarative sentence i) and (passive declarative sentence) the
speaker asserts the corresponding proposition, that is to say, he

3
or she commits himself/ herself to the truth of the proposition, in
uttering (Did Liszt adore Chopin), the speaker questions its truth.
Propositions may be true or false, may be known ,believed, or
doubted, may be asserted, and may be stay constant.

The propositional content condition is a crucial aspect of speech

acts, defining the restrictions on the core content of the utterance
without paying attention to the locutionary act part .In other
words, it specifies what kind of proposition can be used for a
certain type of speech act.In a promise, the propositional content
predicates a future act of the speaker, while in a request, it
predicates a future act of the addressee .This means that one
cannot promise something that is not under their control, or
request something that is not under the listener’s control. For
instance, “I promise that it will rain tomorrow” or “Please make
it rain tomorrow” are not valid speech acts, because they violate
the propositional content condition.(Ibid).

2.ENTAILMENT
Crystal (2008) illustrates that entailment refers to a relation
between a pair of propositions such that the truth of the second
proposition necessarily follows from (is entailed by) the truth of
the first, e.g. I can see a dog – I can see an animal. One cannot
both assert the first and deny the second.
Entailment is a semantic relation that asserts fixed truth relations
between sentences, regardless of empirical truth. It is not an
inference, but rather a truth-based definition, allowing for
clearer understanding of the relationship between sentences.
Ex: a. The anarchist assassinated the emperor.
b. The emperor died. (Saeed,2016).
Entailment is defined by truth as : A sentence p entails a
sentence q when the truth of the first (p) guarantees the truth of
the second (q), and the falsity of the second (q) guarantees the
falsity of the first (p).

4
When p is false, q can be either true or false: if all we were told
was that the anarchist didn’t assassinate the emperor, we
wouldn’t know whether the emperor was dead or alive. When q
is true, p can be either true of false: If we just know that the
emperor is dead, that doesn’t tell us anything about whether the
anarchist assassinated him or not. We have said that an
entailment relation is given to us by linguistic structure:
we do not have to check any fact in the world to deduce the
entailed sentence from the entailing sentence. The source may
be lexical or syntactic.
The entailment can be expressed through lexical relation such as
hyponymy as in:
a. I bought a dog today.
b. I bought an animal today.

The relationship of entailment leads to define paraphrases . The

entailment can be expressed through syntactic relations , for
example, active and passive versions of the same sentence will
entail one another. Sentence a below entails b , and vice versa:
a. The Etruscans built this tomb.
b. This tomb was built by Etruscans. ( Ibid ).

Paraphrases are sentences which have the same set of

entailments, or to put it another way, mutually entail each other.
This truth-based definition does seem to capture our basic
intuitions about entailment and semanticists have gone on to
characterize other semantic relations in terms of truth relations.
For example, we could very simply characterize synonymy as:
a. Alice owns this book.
b. This book belongs to Alice.

5
The sentence a and b always have the same truth value, if a
describes a situation so will b, and vice versa; while if either
incorrectly describes a situation so will the other. We can see
this is true.
The opposite of this relation of synonymy would be
contradiction, with the truth as in:
a. Mr Jones stole my car.
b. Mr Jones did not steal my car. (Ibid).

3. PRESUPPOSTION
Presupposition, is a pragmatic theory,which can be informally
defined as an inference or proposition whose truth is taken for
granted in the utterance of a sentence. It's main function is to act
as a pre condition of some sort for the appropriate use of that
sentence. This background assumption will remain in force
when the sentence which is involved, is negated.
(Culpeper & Haugh, 2014).
In ordinary language, to presuppose something means to assume
it, and the narrower technical use in semantics is related to this.
In the following examples the a sentence is said to presuppose
the b sentence:
a. Her husband is a fool.
b. She has a husband.

The importance of presupposition to the pragmatics debate is

that, it seems to lie at the borderline of such a division. In some
respects, presupposition seems like entailment: a fairly
automatic relationship, involving no reasoning, which seems
free of contextual effects. In other respects, though,
presupposition seems sensitive to facts about the context of
utterance (Saeed,2016).

6
3.1 Two Approaches To Presupposition
Undoubtedly, Presuppostion is a pragmatic theory.
According to Saeed ( 2016 ) , Presuppostion is an
approach to get the meaning in which he illustrates two
approaches to presupposition:
In the first approach, it is the philosophical one, sentences are
viewed as external objects. Meaning is seen as an attribute of
sentences rather than something constructed by the participants.
Semantics then consists of relating a sentence-object to other
sentence-objects and to the world.
The second approach views sentences as the utterances of
individuals engaged in a communication act. The aim here is
about modelling the strategies that speakers and hearers use to
communicate with one another. So we might look at
communication from the speaker’s viewpoint and talk about
presupposition as part of the task of packaging an utterance; or
adopt the listener’s viewpoint and see presupposition as one of a
number of inferences that the listener might make on the basis
of what the speaker has just said.
John’s brother has just got back from Texas.
John has a brother.

We can adopt the sentences-as-external-objects approach and

try to identify a semantic relationship between these two
sentences. One obvious way is to cast this as a truth relation, as
we did for entailment and other relations.

The important difference between entailment and presupposition

is that if we negate an entailing sentence, then the entailment
fails; but negating a presupposing sentence allows the
presupposition to survive. Take for example the entailment pair in:
a. I saw my father today.
b. I saw someone today.
If we negate (a) then no longer entails b:
7
a. I didn’t see my father today.
b. I saw someone today.
So it seems that viewing presupposition as a truth relation
allows us to capture one interesting difference between the
behaviour of presupposition and entailment under negation (Ibid).

3.2 Presupposition Failure

One phenomenon which has traditionally caused problems for
a truth relations approach but may be less problematic in an
interactional approach is presupposition failure. It has been
observed that using a name or a definite description to refer
presupposes the existence of the named or described entity:
a. The King of France is bald .
b. There is a King of France.

The problem arises when there exists no referent for the

nominal. If there’s no King of France.
-This is a problem for truth-based theories, known as a truth
value gap. If a statement can be neither true nor false, it opens a
nasty can of worms.
Russell’s famous solution was to analyse definite descriptions as
complex expressions roughly equivalent to:
The King of France is bald is true if and only if :
a. at least one thing is the king.
b. at most one thing is the king.
c. whatever is the king is bald. (Ibid).

4. LOGICAL OPERATORS AND TRUTH

Saeed (2016) illustrates that the truth behavior of sentences is
influenced by logical words such as connectors, and, or, if...
then, the negative word not, and quantifiers like all, some. These
words make sentences true because they are predictable from
their logical form. However, the truth of a sentence, such as "If
Germany beat Brazil then Brazil lose to Germany," depends on

8
the meaning of individual words like "beat" and "lose," rather
than any logical form given to the sentence.We can see this,
because if we replace the verbs with other verbs, we
cannotpredict that the resulting sentence will also be analytically
true, e.g.
If Germany attack Brazil then Brazil outscore Germany.
The sentence "beat and lose" might be true or not due to the
semantic relationship in English. This type of necessary truth is
not typically a concern for logicians as it relies on individual
lexical relations, not general rules or schemas. Such sentences
can derive from synonymy, simple antonymy, converse pairs, or
hyponymy, making them potentially true or false.
My bachelor brother is an unmarried man.
If she's his sister then he's her brother.
If Elvis is dead then he is not alive.
A cat is an animal.

So the examples have shown us that sentences can be

analytically true because of the behaviour of logical words
(connectors, quantifiers) or because of the meaning of individual
nouns and verbs. ( Saeed , 2016).

Logical operators are symbols or elements, expressed as and, or,

not, and if. They are truth-functional and depend on the truth of
the original basic propositions to which they are added . For
example, the "and" operator(represented by the symbol ∧) takes
two propositions and returns true only if both propositions are
true. The "or" operator (represented by the symbol ∨) returns
true if at least one of the propositions is true. The "not" operator
(represented by the symbol ¬) negates the truth value of a
proposition. The "if" operator(represented by the symbol →)
generates a conditional proposition, stating that if one
proposition is true, then another proposition is also true.
(Reimer,2010).

9
5. POSSIBLE WORLD SEMANTICS
In formal semantics, a possible world (CoU) is a world that
shares all its facts with our real world, while other worlds
represent alternative ways of things. There are multiple possible
worlds, as different CoUs could be fixed within reality.
Alternative, non-real worlds differ only in some details, such as
if Mary is tired in a real world but has had a nap in another
world that is not as different from it. This type of world is used
in statements like:
If Mary had had a nap, she would not be so tired. (Löbner,2013).
Löbner states that Possible-world semantics (PWS) is a branch
of formal semantics that assumes possible worlds are given,
allowing for the derived truth values of sentences based on the
necessary information in a particular context. It is a way of
explaining the meaning of sentences that involve words like
"possible", "necessary", "might", "must", and so on, for
example, the sentence "It is possible that it will rain tomorrow"
means that there is some way that the world could be such that it
will rain tomorrow.

The concept of possible worlds allows for general

interpretations of linguistic expressions, assigning referents and
truth values to every possible world . Intensional logic is a type
of logic that analyzes the meaning of natural language
expressions using possible worlds.

Intensions are the internal content of an expression that

determines its reference in different possible worlds. They can
be classified into one-place predicate constants (properties) and
multi-place predicate constants (relations). These concepts are
crucial for expressing and analyzing complex meanings
involving modality, conditionality, belief, and attitude. They can
be used to define modal operators, conditional sentences, and
propositional attitudes. Intension is the internal content of a

10
word, phrase, or sentence that determines its reference in
different possible worlds. It specifies a condition for an object to
be referred to by the phrase. Intension is a function from
possible worlds to truth-values, determining whether the
sentence is true or false.

Extension is the actual reference of a word, phrase, or sentence

in a given possible world. For example, the intension of “the
president of the United States” is something like “the person
who holds the office of the head of state and government of the
United States” while the extension of “the president of the
United States” in the actual world is Joe Biden, because he is the
person who satisfies the condition given by the intension. The
extension of a sentence in a given possible world is its truth-
value in that world.

An intensional model is a way of representing the meaning of

natural language sentences using a formal language that can
capture the differences between what is said and what is
implied. For example, the sentence “I believe that it is raining”
does not mean the same thing as “It is raining”, even though
they might have the same truth value in some situations. The
intensional model allows us to distinguish between the intension
and the extension of an expression,for example, the intension of
“the morning star” and “the evening star” are different, but their
extension is the same (the planet Venus). An intensional model
uses possible worlds to define the extension of an expression in
different situations. ( Ibid).

11
 CONCLUSION

This assignment has explored the semantic relations that exist

between sentences, such as entailment and presupposition. It has
reviewed one approach that determines these relations based on
truth conditions, applying the concept of linguistic or analytic
truth. It has shown that this approach can explain entailment, but
not all features of presupposition, especially the influence of
presupposition on contextual elements. It has compared this
semantic approach with pragmatic approaches that describe
presupposition in terms of the speaker’s strategies for delivering
her message according to her assessment of the hearer’s
knowledge.

12
 References

Crystal , D.(2008).A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Haung.Y .(2014) Pragmatics. United Kingdom: Oxford

University Press.

Löbner. S. (2013). Understanding Semantics. London:

Routledge.

Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Saeed, J. (2016). Semantics. 4th Edition. Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing.

13
Ministry Of Higher Education and Scientific Research
University Of Thi-Qar
College Of Education for Humanities
Department of English (2023)M.A.Program

Prepared by :
Fatima Hussain
Duaa Sadoon
Asmaa Madlul

Supervised by:
Asst. Prof . Saddam Salim
Introduction:
Sentence meaning is a crucial aspect of semantics , since it enables us to understand
the language as a whole unit not as individual words, to understand the concept of
sentence meaning, we need to explain some important aspects: verbs and situation
types, tense, aspect, mood and evidentality, Which allow the speaker to construct
different perspective of the situation, we will start with verbs and the classification
of situation through semantic distinction of situation types, tense, aspect and then
the mood system which allows the speaker to express different attitudes. ultimately,
the evidentiality system which enable us to identify the source of our beliefs.

Verbs and situation types:

verbs are the backbones of meaning, serving as the building blocks that convey
actions, events,and states of being, Verbs control the sentence semantically and
syntactically. for further reading see Rimer(2010,ch.: 10).

Furthermore beyond their traditional role of grammar,, they play an important role
in encoding information about the types of situation they described, Rimer(2010)
considered them as the mean of interaction between semantics and syntax, Which
means that verbs are not restricted in the field of syntax or the grammatical
functions but also extend to the field of semantics.

Types of Verbs
1.Stative verbs: These verbs allow the speaker to view a situation as a steady
state, with no internal phases or changes. Moreover the speaker doesn't overtly
focus on the beginning or end of the state. Even if the speaker uses
a stative in the past, e.g.
- Mary loved to drive sports cars.

 No attention is directed to the end of the state. We do not know from the
above example if or how the state ended: whether Mary’s tastes changed, or
she herself is no longer around. All we are told is that the relationship
described between Mary and sports cars existed for a while.(Saeed, 2003)

1
  In general, these verbs describe a state or condition rather than an action. They
represent a state of being, perception, possession, emotion, or thought. Stative
verbs are typically used to express characteristics or qualities that are not
easily measurable or observable. Examples of stative verbs include "be,"
"seem," "like," "belong," and "love."

2.Dynamic Verbs: verbs in dynamic use (Quirk;Greenaum,1973) , According to

Quirk, these verbs are marked by their progressive aspect and they fall into five
types, including activity verbs (e.g., eat, play), process verbs (e.g., grow, change),
verbs of bodily sensation.
(e.g., hurt, ache), transitional event verbs (e.g., arrive, die), and momentary verbs
(e.g., hit, jump), which suggest repetition.

 We can conclude that the main difference between dynamic and Stative verbs
is the progressive aspct which denotes the action or the movement of some
verbs rather than the others.

While Quirk classifieded dynamic verbs according to their progressive aspect,

Saeed(2003) classified them according to their semantic distinction:

1. Event&Process Verbs: In events, the speaker perceives the situation as a

complete entity, such as "The mine blew up." On the other hand, in a process,
we observe the internal structure of a dynamic situation, like "He walked to
the shop."

It is wroth to mention that process verbs are divided into two types:
Inchoatives and resultatives verbs:refer to processes where our focus is on the
initiation of a new state or a change of state. For instance

The ice melted..

Resultatives, on the other hand , are processes that are perceived to have a definitive
end point or completion, for instance
Ardal baked a cake.

2
  Semantic interpretation plays a crucial role in differentiate between these two
processes.I mean in the above example if the act of melting is interrupted, we
can say that the action was happening, Still has a meaning, while in the
another example," Adriel baked a cake", if Adriel is interrupted halfway
through baking a cake. the meaning will not be completed, the result is an
ambiguous meaning.

2-Durative& Bunctual processes: Durative processes describe situations or

processes that continue for a period of time.for example, John slept.

Punctual processes describe events that happen quickly that they seem almost
instant and don't take much time. For example, John caught.

3-Telic and atelic processes: Telic processes are viewed as having a natural
endpoint or completion, for example, Harry was building a raft.

on the other hand, atelic processes do not have a natural endpoint or specific goal in
mind.

These are the basic distinctions between stative and dynamic verbs, on the level of
grammar, they can be distinguished by Progressive aspect and imperative mood
which usually occure with dynamic verbs, it would be odd to use imperative with
Stative, For example: Learn Arabic but not Know Arabic!.

But, As usual, there is an exception for this rule or as I prerfer to call it" gaps

Certain verbs exhibit a greater degree of stativeness than others.

For example, the verb "remain" , it behaves similarly to other stative verbs by not
being used in the progressive form, However, it does allow for the imperative form,
as demonstrated below:
a. The answer remains the same: no!
b. *The answer is remaining the same: no!
c. Remain at your post! (Saeed, 2003)

3
It's important to note that some verbs can function as both stative and dynamic,
depending on the context, and this is one of the area of overlapping between
semantics and pragmatics، for example, the verb "have" Which can be used in two
different meanings:

Stative: "She has a car." In this case, "have" is describing a possession or state of
ownership.

Dynamic: "They are having a party." Here, "have" is used to describe an action or
activity, specifically hosting or participating in a party.

Until now, We understand the meaning of verbs and its types,now, we can explain
the types of situation based on verb's types, but first, we need to understand the
meaning of situation befor deliving into it's types.

Situation as a concept:

Situation refers to the way in which something is placed in relation to its

surroundings( Merriam Webster.com )refers to a particular state of affairs or
context that is relevant for understanding the meaning of linguistic expressions. It
encompasses the circumstances, events, and entities involved in a given
communicative context.

Two criteria for categorizing different types of situations are telicity and durativity
versus punctuality
1-Telicity: A situation is considered telic if it naturally has a defined endpoint or
completion based on the meaning of the verb phrase (VP),, If there is no clear
endpoint, the situation is classified as atelic.
Ex:
- " The plane flew to London." (Telic: the event ends when the plane reaches
London)
- " The plane flew." (Atelic: no specific goal or endpoint mentioned)
- " She ate a bag of chips." (Telic: eating stops when the bag is empty)
- " She ate (chips/plates of chips)." (Atelic: no specific amount of chips indicating
the end of the eating event)
4
2-Durativity vs. Punctuality: A verb phrase (VP) is considered durative if it is
perceived as lasting over a period of time, while it is considered punctual if it is
perceived as immediate without any internal temporal structure.

Ex:
Punctual: explode, flash, hit the wall, win the game, reach the summit, discover the
answer.

Durative: paint , swim, work, read a book

It's important to note that our perception of time in language is based on how we
perceive events rather than their physical reality. For example, explosions and
coughs technically take t ime, but we perceive them as instantaneous, so they are
considered punctual.

Situation types:
According to Saeed (2003), the historical starting point of situation types is an
article by Zeno Vendler (1967) called ‘Verbs and times’.

In his article, Vendler divided situation types into four types as below:

1. States: These are situations that remain static and unchanged throughout their
duration. for example: "she knows the answer ", He hates beer.

State sentences are true at any point in time during the duration of the state. Unlike
events, states do not involve change. For example, a sentence like "He walked" is
not a state because a walking person at a specific moment will be in a particular
position, which is only part of walking.

2. Activities (or processes): These are durative and atelic situations that typically
involve an agent and some form of change.
Ex: "Work," "Eat ice cream," "Play the piano

5
3. Achievements: These are punctual and telic situations that have a natural
endpoint or completion.

Ex: "Explode," "Flash," "Spot a tiger

4. Accomplishments: These are durative and telic situations that consist of an

activity leading to an achievement at the end.

Ex: "Burn down," "Hammer the metal flat.

After him, C. S. Smith came with a fifth type "semelfactive", Which makes some
overlap with Achievement types, We can differentiate between them throught their
results:
1. Semelfactives: are actions that happen very quickly and don't have a specific
end point or goal,e.g. [knock], [cough].

2. Achievements: are also quick actions, but they result in a noticeable change or
new state,e.g. [win a race]. (Smith 1991: 28)
In general, By categorizing situations into these four types, we can better
understand their characteristics and temporal aspects.

Evidentiality:
as a concept this term has a long history of study, It is not a modren phenomenon,
since it has been first disccused by Boas(1938) in his researches of linguistics,
Furthermore, this topic is considered on of the topics which is studied by both,
Semantics and pragmatics.

"In pragmatics or discourse, it is considered a means of rhetorical persuasion, while

in semantics, the focus is on its semantic properties within a grammaticalized
system" (Machine, 2000, p. 27).

Saeed (2003) clearly defines them as a semantic category that allows the speakers to
communicate their attitude towards the source of their information. This is possible
in English, of course, through the use of a separate clause or parenthetic adverbials.

6
Evidently exists or can be found within the statement in the English language
through the use of linguistic markers, which can be words, phrases, or clauses.
These markers indicate the source of information, whether it is derived from the
speaker's personal knowledge or from another source. For example:

'I saw the suspect fleeing the crime scene.'

In this example, the phrase 'I saw the suspect fleeing the crime scene' indicates
direct observation as the source of information. The use of the verb 'saw' suggests
that the detective personally witnessed the suspect's actions, conveying a high
degree of certainty about the event. This use of direct evidentiality provides
important information about the reliability and source of knowledge for the
statement made by the detective.

We can express evidentially using other expressions such as 'I mean,' 'I see,' 'I
found,' etc.

In general, evidentiality is a pragmatic-semantic phenomenon since we can interpret

them as encoded evidential meaning, which allows the speaker to communicate
their attitude about the source of information. Alternatively, we can consider them
as pragmatic phenomena when they are interpreted in respect to the discourse
context."

The semantics of Tense & aspect

To explore the notion of tense and aspect, we need to understand the concept of
time. According to Quirk (1973, p.41), time is a universal, non-linguistic term with
three divisions: past, present, and future. By tense, we understand the
correspondence between the form of the verb and our concept of time. Aspect
concerns the manner in which the verbal action is experienced or regarded.

7
Quirk, in his statement, gave a very accurate description of the above concepts.
Time is not a linguistic phenomenon, that's means, time is an abstract notion
expressed by tense, which is the grammatical representation of time. Aspect, on the
other hand, refers to the duration or completion of an action. In general, these terms
work together to express the speaker's situation.

Tense:

Tense allows a speaker to locate a situation relative to some reference point in

time, most likely the time of speaking (Saeed, 2003).

Tense can be expressed either by verbs, for example, "They Israeled my home," or
by an adverb of time, for example, yesterday, the weather was terrible.

The word "yesterday" and the morpheme "ed" in the above examples, refer to
specific point of time, and this point can be in the past, present or in the future.
That's why, Saeed(2003) described tense as"Tense is said to be a deictic system,
since the reference point for the system is usually the act of speaking.

The word "diectic" mean pointing by words, or as Yule defined these expressions
as pointing via language (for further reading, See Culpeper, 2014)

Rimer(2010) also defined tense as the class of grammatical markers used to signal
the location of situations in time. Three basic temporal divisions are relevant to the
representation of time in language: what is happening now, what will happen
afterwards, and what has already happened.Tense is the relationship between the
form of the verb and the parts of time (past,present ,future) .

-Tense can be simple (absolut) and can be complx(relative), In the simple types,
there are three tenses, past, simple and futute.

The digram below, shows them clearly.

8
-She saw the film

-She sees the film

-She will see the film

B.Complex tenses:

According to saeed(2003), the speaker

can locate an event in the past or future and use that event as the reference
point for its own past, present and future. To do this in English complex

tenses are used.

The digram below will clarify the idea

Ex :

By 1939 my father had seen several arrests.

9
The verb had seen is one of these complex tenses, called the past perfect or
pluperfect. The year 1939 is in the past of the utterance of course, but the speaker
has made it the anchoring(prove) point for its own past. The father‟s acts of seeing
are marked as being in this secondary past, as well as in the past relative to the act
of speaking. (ibid)

Ex :

By 2050 we will have experienced at least two major earthquakes.

Here of course the earthquakes are portrayed as in the past relative to 2050, but in
the future relative to the act of speaking. (saeed,2016)

Aspect

Aspects have to do, not with the location of an event in time, but

with its temporal distribution or contour.(Hocket, 1958,237)

Aspect as a systems allow speakers to relate situations and time, but instead of
fixing situations in time relative to the act of speaking, like tense does, aspect
allows speakers to view an event in various ways: as complete, or incomplete, as so
short as to involve almost no time, as something stretched over a perceptible period,
or as something repeated over a period.Aspect is the temporal structure of event
how much time ( parts of time). (saeed,2016)

Ex :
a. Ralph was building a fire escape last week.( past progressive tense/aspect)
b. Ralph built a fire escape last week.( simple past tense/aspect)
Both sentences describe a situation in the past but they differ views the fire escape
as completed, while ( a ) gives no information about whether the fire escape
ever got finished.(ibid)
10
Aspect: can be divided in to categories, either completed or perfective or
imperfective.

For Example:
1-imperfective: I was watching TV [when the door bell rang].

2-perfective: I watched TV for a while [then went to bed].

The difference between these two sentences is explained by Lonbner (2010)

The imperfective aspect describes a situation at a given time without specifying

what happened before or after that time. It allows the speaker to describe the
situation from within that specific time. The time referred to can be a moment or an
extended period, and the state expressed by the imperfective aspect remains
unchanged during that time.
While the another aspect (perfective) or the completed, the event is described
rather than time, it described what the speaker did in sequences, he watched the TV
and then he went to bed.

Combining situation type and aspect

There is an interaction between situation types and aspect. For instance, certain verb
forms, like progressives, are appropriate in some situation types but not in others. In
actuality, natural combinations of situation type, aspect, and tense limit the
possibilities for describing situations in any language. Certain tense and aspect
forms relate with the basic meanings of verbs, while others do not. Semanticists
must take this knowledge into account because speakers are aware of the
appropriate combinations. The difficulty is that the combinations are very language
specific. The examples of contrasts between simple and progressive forms which
show this:
(saeed,2016)
EX:
a. She blinked her eyes.
b. She was blinking her eyes.

11
The observation is that the (b) sentences have a vividness missing from the (a)
sentences.(b)the description of motion is more vividthan in( a) because of the
progressive‟s focus on internal successive phases.

These connotations of dynamism mean that the progressive does not combine with
stative situation types in English:

EX:
a. ∗He was understanding the problem.
b. He understood the problem
(saeed,2016)
That is to say, reflecting the various aspects that can be applied to a given situation
type is a part of the semantic description of a language. Thus for English , we need
to recognize that a speaker can choose to view an accomplishment from a perfective
viewpoint as in (a) below or from an imperfective viewpoint as in (b).

Modality

1-Modality
(Kearns,2011) states that modality expresses necessity and possibility. Modal
propositions introduce the concepts of necessity and possibility to basic
propositions. Saeed (2009,p.138 &2016,p.134 ) states that modality is a cover
term for devices which allow speakers to express varying degrees of commitment
to, or belief in, a proposition.
Ex:
- Niamh has gone to the airport.

In this sentence , we assume the speaker is committed to truth, but this

assumption can be influenced by the speaker's intentions. If we learn that Niamh
didn't go to the airport, our reactions may differ based on whether the speaker
was simply wrong in her belief or intentionally misled. We could consider the
denial to be the inverse of the assertion as in :

12
Ex:
-Niamh hasn’t gone to the airport.

However, without any additional spoken qualification, both the first sentence and its
negation (second sentence) appear to carry an unspoken guarantee of ‘to the best of
my knowledge’(ibid).

In English, modality is most commonly expressed by the modal verbs shall ,should,
can, could, may, might, would and must, and sometimes will, and by adverbs like
possibly, maybe, perhaps and necessarily (Kearns,2011).

Modality strategies
Modal systems allow speakers to modulate this guarantee "to the best of my
knowledge" to signal stronger and weaker commitment to the factuality of
statements (Saeed ,2009)We can achieve that through a number of possible
linguistic strategies:-
First :The sentence can be embedded in a higher clause with a modality adjective
or adverb , e.g. (where S represents our sentence) :-
a. It is certain that S
b. It is probable that S
c. It is likely that S
d. It is possible that S
Using versions modality adjective or adverb (a-d) shift from a strong to a weak
commitment to S.
Second: When a sentence includes a verb in the higher clause that describes the
extent of the speaker's belief - what is often called in the philosophical literature her
propositional attitude such as :
a. I know that S
13
b. I believe that S
c. I think that S
d. I don’t know that S
e. I doubt that S
f. I know that not S
In these sentences, we have a gradient from certainty of the proposition expressed
by S's truth to certainty of its falsity.
Third: By using auxiliary verbs these mark the variations of commitment towards
the assertion .Ex:
- She has left by now.
a. She must have left by now.
b. She might have left by now.
c. She could have left by now.
d. She needn’t have left by now.
e. She couldn’t have left by now.
In this role , auxiliary verbs are called modal verbs (ibid).

Types of Modal Verbs :

There are four types of modality in English language :
1-Epistemic Modality
2-Deontic Modality
3-Non-epistemic modality
4- Dynamic Modality
1- Epistemic modality
Epistemic modality is so-called because it concerns "what is known" from the
Greek epistēmē, meaning ‘knowledge’
(Kearns 2011, p.80) . Given what is already known, epistemic modality
expresses the necessity or possibility of a proposition being true in fact.
According to Saeed (2016,p.139) when the speaker is signaling degrees of
knowledge for
Ex:
-You can drive this car
14
 A speaker can use this to mean :
-It is possible for you to drive this car.
What is expressed in the sentence could be paraphrased as ‘Given what we
already know, allow to you drive this car'.
2- Deontic modality
Where the verbs express the speaker's attitude toward social factors such as
obligation , responsibility, and permission (Saeed 2016 ,p.139) . Keama (2011
,p.82) illustrates that modal auxiliaries also express deontic modality, which is
concerned with compliance or compatibility with some code of behavior or set of
rules.
A-In the sense of obligation such as :
-You must take these books back.
The using of the auxiliary verb (must) reflects a stronger statement of obligation
than a speaker says :
Ex:
-You ought to take these books back.
B- In the sense of permission we can see the difference as in the following
Ex:
a. You can leave them there.
b. You might leave them there.
The sentence (a) is a clear granting of permission, while (c) is a weaker and
politer version.
Deontic modals, like epistemic modals, signal a speaker's judgments; however,
unlike epistemics, the judgement in deontics is about how people should behave in
the world.

Sometimes the relationship between epistemic and deontic modality is more

complicated than an ambiguity that can be resolved in context a speakers can use an
epistemic modal to imply a deontic interpretation for example ;
-You could have told me you were coming.
Here the possibility of telling is used to imply a missed obligation.
3.Non-epistemic modality

15
 It expressed by the same forms, but different on the speaker’s views . There are
three types of non-epistemic modality:

1- Abilitive modality
Abilitive modality reflects possibility based on the speaker’s view of a subject’s
abilities as in :
Ex:
-Alexander can play cricket.

2-Teleological modality
expresses strengths of possibility and necessity relative to the speaker’s view of a
subject’s goals such as :-
[Context: In order to get the job…]
Ex:
He can/has to improve his Irish.

3-Bouletic modality
Reflects possibility and necessity relative to the speaker’s view of a subject’s
desires, for example:-
[Context: Since Isabel wants to go on a world cruise…]
Ex:
She can/should start saving now.

4-Dynamic modals
Dynamic modality expresses the strength and ability of the subject participant of
the clause such as:-
-Alexander can play cricket.
This means that it is intended to show what the subject can and is able to do in a
sentence or an utterance. This is mainly related to physical capacity(ibid).

Possible World Semantics Approach

16
According to Saeed (2009) both epistemic and deontic modality can be marked by
the same means, for example modal verbs, this similarity has led semanticists to ask
what they have in common, and to speculate whether one type of modality has
developed out of the other . Modality compares the real world with hypothetical
versions, derived from possible world semantics is first formulated by David
Lewis (1973, 1986). Epistemic modals allow setting up hypothetical situations and
expressing different prediction strengths.
Ex:
- It might be raining in Belfast.
She is imagining a scenario (rain in Belfast) and predicting a reasonable match with
reality.

Also this approach relates modality to conditional sentences .

Ex:
-If I were rich, I would be living somewhere hotter.
We can call the if-clause in sentences the condition, and the other clause, the
consequent.
This perspective on modality is also supported by the existence of languages with
verb forms that distinguish between events in the real world and events in future or
imaginary worlds on a regular basis. This two-term modal distinction is often called
a realis / irrealis modality (i.e. a reality/unreality distinction): for example a
distinction between realis and irrealis moods in the Australian language
Ngiyambaa:
a. yuruy-gu yidja-\a.
rain-ERG rain-PRES
‘It is raining.’ (realis)
b. yuruy- gu yidja-l-aga.
Rain ERG- rain CM- IRREALIS
‘It might/will rain.’ (irrealis)
In summary modality refers to linguistic devices that indicate the degree to which
an observation is possible, probable, likely, certain, permitted, or prohibited. In
English, these notions are commonly (though not exclusively) expressed by modal
auxiliaries, such as can, might, should, and will .

17
2-Mood
In English, modality distinctions are marked by a variety of means, including
adverbs and modal verbs. When such distinctions are marked by verb endings that
form distinct conjugations, these are referred to as moods in grammatical terms
(Saeed ;2016). While Quirk (1973 p.40)

Claims that mood relates the verbal action to such conditions as certainty,
obligation, necessity, possibility . Saeed (2016) mentions two types of moods :-
1- Subjunctive Mood Verbs: The subjunctive mood is used to express
hypothetical or unreal situations, often following certain phrases or
expressions. EX:-
-If I were you, I would apologize.
- I suggest that he be present at the meeting.
-It's important that she finish the project on time.
2.Indicative Mood Verbs: These are used to express factual information or
statements.
Ex:
-He is eating dinner.
-She plays the piano.
-They have completed their work.
.
Each mood serves a specific purpose in conveying the speaker's or writer's intention
and attitude toward the action or state being expressed. Understanding the
appropriate use of each mood is important for effective communication in English.

 Modality ,as a semantic category , allows the speaker to assume various

attitudes toward a proposition. Epistemic modality reflects various judgments
of factuality and deontic modality communicates judgments of moral and
legal obligation. Both can be seen as implying a comparison between the real
world and hypothetical versions of it.

18
References
Löbner, S. (2013). Understanding Semantics. London: Routledge.

Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.
Saeed, J. (2016). 4th Edition. Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Kearns K.(2nd 2011). Semantics. Palgrave Ltd

Quirk R. , Greenbaum S. , Leech G. and Svartvik J. (1973) . A University Grammar

of English. Longman Group UK Limited.

Saeed J. (3rd 2009) . Semantics . Blackwell Publishing Ltd

19
20
Republic of Iraq
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Thi-Qar University
College of Education for Humanities
Department of English/MA programme

Thematic Roles
and
Verb Valency
Semantics
Week 11

Supervised by
Asst. Prof. Saddam Salim Hmood

Submitted by
Hussein Kareem Hassan

2023/2024
 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

Introduction

Thematic roles are semantic relations that noun phrases have with respect to
the action or state described by a verb. For example, in the sentence "The boy
kicked the ball," The boy is the agent (the one who did the kicking), the ball is
the theme (the thing which was kicked).

Verb valency is a property of verbs that determines the number and type of
arguments that they require. For example, the verb "put" is a trivalent verb
because it requires three arguments: (put V: <AGENT, THEME, LOCATION>).
The verb "eat" is a divalent verb because it requires two arguments: an agent and
a patient. The verb "sleep" is a monovalent verb because it requires only one
argument: an agent.

Thematic roles and verb valency are closely related. In general, a verb's
valency determines the number of thematic roles that it can express. For example,
a trivalent verb can express three thematic roles: agent, patient, and instrument.
A divalent verb can express two thematic roles: agent and patient. A monovalent
verb can express only one thematic role: agent.

Thematic roles and verb valency are also important for understanding the syntax
of sentences. In general, the subject of a sentence corresponds to the agent of the
verb, the direct object of a sentence corresponds to the patient of the verb, and the
indirect object of a sentence corresponds to the beneficiary of the verb.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

Thematic Roles:
According to Saeed (2016), thematic role can be seen as ‘A semantic
relation an argument takes in relation to a verb, such as agent, patient, theme,
instrument, location, source, goal, etc.’ Such roles have a number of labels in
semantics, including participant roles (Allan 1986), deep semantic cases
(Fillmore 1968), semantic roles (Giv’on 1990), thematic relations (Jackendoff
1972, Gruber 1976) and thematic roles (Dowty 1986, 1989, 1991, Jackendoff
1990).
The list of thematic roles like the following (where the relevant role bearing
nominal is in bold):
1- Agent: The initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition, e.g.
- Sarah cooked the meat.
- The fox jumped out of the ditch.
- Ayat opened the letter.
Some writers (e.g. Foley and Van Valin 1984, Jackendoff 1990) have
suggested that AGENT is a particular type of a more general thematic role
ACTOR, where ACTOR “expresses the participant which performs, effects,
instigates, or controls the situation denoted by the predicate’ (Foley and Van
Valin 1984: 29). So every AGENT is an ACTOR, but not the other way round:
in the example below the car is an ACTOR but not an AGENT since it
presumably is neither in possession of a wish to kill nor animate: (Saeed, 2016)
- The car ran over the hedgehog.

2- Patient: The entity undergoing the effect of some action, often undergoing
some change in state, e.g.
- Enda cut back these bushes.
- The sun melted the ice
3- Theme: The entity which is moved by an action, or whose location is
described, e.g.
- The boy passed the ball wide.
- The book is in the library.
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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

There is some variation in the use of these terms: for example, Radford
(1988) treats PATIENT and THEME as different names for the same role. Here
we adopt the distinction that PATIENT is reserved for entities acted upon and
changed by the verb’s action while THEME describes an entity moved in literal
or figurative space by the action of the verb, but constitutionally unchanged. Thus
the noun phrase the rock would be a PATIENT in example A below but a THEME
in example B: (Saeed, 2016)
-A) Fred shattered the rock.
- B) Fred threw the rock.

4- Experiencer: The entity which is aware of the action or state described by the
predicate but which is not in control of the action or state, e.g.
- Kevin felt ill.
- Mary saw the smoke.
- Ayat heard the door shut.

5- Beneficiary or Recipient: The entity for whose benefit the action was
performed, e.g.
- Robert filled in the form for his grandmother.
- They baked me a cake.
- I’ve found you a place.

6- Instrument: The means by which an action is performed or something comes

about, e.g.
- She cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe.
- They signed the treaty with the same pen.
- The key opened the door.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

7- Location: The place in which something is situated or takes place, e.g.

- The monster was hiding under the bed.
- The band played in a marquee.
- The horse jumped the fence.

8- Goal: The entity toward which something moves, either literally as in example
A or metaphorically as in example B:

- A) Sheila handed her license to the policeman.

- Ayat handed the book back to Hussein.
- B) Hussein told the joke to his friends.

9- Source: The entity from which something moves, either literally as in example
A or metaphorically as in example B: usually the prepositional phrase begins
with ‘from’
- A) The plane came back from Baghdad.
- She borrowed a book from Fatima
- B) We got the idea from a French magazine.

10- Stimulus: The entity causing an effect (usually psychological) in the

EXPERIENCER, e.g.
- John didn’t like the cool breeze.
- The noise frightened the passengers.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

Ex: Gina raised the car with a jack.

To describe the thematic roles of this example above, by calling Gina the
AGENT of the action, the car the THEME, and the jack the INSTRUMENT.
(Saeed, 2016)
Having identified these thematic roles, the next question we might ask is:
how are such roles identified in the grammar? For our English examples
above, the answer is by a combination of syntactic structure and the choice of
verb. There are typical matchings between participant roles and grammatical
relations. As in our original example (Gina raised the car with a jack.), the
subject of the sentence often corresponds to the AGENT, the direct object to the
THEME, while the INSTRUMENT often occurs as a prepositional phrase.
(Ibid)

Though this is the typical case, it is not necessarily so: for example, it is
possible to omit the AGENT from the sentence and as a result have the
INSTRUMENT occupy subject position, for example:

- The jack raised the car.

We can see the effect of the choice of verb if we try to describe this same situation
without either the AGENT or the INSTRUMENT. We cannot simply allow the
THEME to occupy subject position as in following example A; we have to
change the verb as in example B:

- A) ∗The car raised. (Unacceptable)

- B) The car rose.

This is because the verb raise requires an ACTOR. The verb rise however
describes a change of state without any slot for an ACTOR so that while example
B above is fine, but in the examples C and D below are not possible: (Saeed,
2016)

- C) ∗ Gina rose the car.

- D) ∗ The jack rose the car.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

What this simple example shows is that a speaker’s choice of participant roles
has two aspects: The choice of a verb with its particular requirements for thematic
roles, and within the limits set by this, the choice of grammatical relations for the
roles. We look at these choices next, beginning with the relationship between
thematic roles and grammatical relations: first we describe how various thematic
roles may occupy subject position, then we look briefly at the selection of
thematic roles as part of a verb’s lexical semantics. (Saeed, 2016)

Verb Valency
Crystal D. (2008) defines valency as ‘A term introduced by the French
linguist Lucien Tesnière (1893–1954), which has been particularly influential in
the development of models of dependency grammar in Europe and Russia. The
term is derived from chemistry, and is used in linguistics to refer to the number
and type of bonds which syntactic elements may form with each other. As in
chemistry, a given element may have different valencies in different contexts. A
valency grammar presents a model of a sentence containing a fundamental
element (typically, the verb) and a number of dependent elements (variously
referred to as arguments, expressions, complements or valents) whose number
and type is determined by the valency attributed to the verb.

This means, verb valency is the number of arguments a verb requires to form a
complete sentence. Arguments are the words that fill in the slots of a verb's
meaning. For example, the verb "eat" has two arguments: the eater and the thing
being eaten. The eater is typically the subject of the sentence, and the thing being
eaten is typically the object of the sentence.

Leech (1981) states that, by returning to the idea, rejected earlier, that the
meaning of a sentence is derived from the meanings of the words of which it is
composed. A key to this approach is the concept of valency, which may be
defined as the potential that a word possesses for combining with other words
both syntactically and semantically. (The term valency is borrowed from
chemistry, where once again an interesting parallel with language structure is
suggested.)

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

Let us take as illustrations the two words say and speak.

Subject + say + Object
Subject + speak
In the above example, ‘say’ has a double valency - it requires both a subject
and an object; whereas ‘speak’ has only a single valency which is a subject -it
has no object. This may seem just a longwinded way (indirect way, another way)
of saying that say is transitive while speak is intransitive; but the point is that
valency has both a syntactic and a corresponding semantic aspect.

The definitions of say and speak differ in that, speak includes a null argument
(implies an unspoken object); that is, the meaning of speak is roughly to ‘say
something'. Thus, the valencies of say and speak are different: say requires two
elements (Subject and Object) to complete its meaning, whereas speak requires
only one element (Subject alone).(Leech, 1981)

Leech (1981) said that, ‘What I have called the ‘valency’ of a verb is the
number and type of syntactic slots or roles which have to be filled in order to
complete the meaning of that verb. Although the example of say and speak is
oversimplified, it does show that syntactic valency is independent of what we
might now fittingly call ‘semantic valency’: the combinatorial possibilities of
predicates and their terms. Both verbs say and speak express the same two-place
predicate ‘say’, and yet their syntactic valencies are different.’

In linguistics, verb valency, also known as valence, refers to the number and
type of arguments or participants that a verb requires to make a complete and
meaningful sentence. It is a crucial aspect of semantics, as it determines the
semantic roles and thematic relations that the verb can express.

Saeed, (2016) states that, verbs have particular requirements for their
thematic roles. Since this is part of a speaker’s semantic knowledge about a verb,
the speakers might expect it to be part of the lexical information stored for verbs.
Thus, we need to know not only how many arguments a verb requires (i.e.
whether it is intransitive, transitive, etc.) but also what thematic roles its
arguments may hold.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

In the generative grammar literature, this listing of thematic roles is often

called a thematic role grid, or theta-grid for short. Saeed (2016) defines
Thematic role grid, as ‘A representation of a verb’s required arguments in terms
of their thematic role.' A simple example might be:
- put V: <AGENT, THEME, LOCATION>
This entry tells us that put is a three-argument, or ditransitive, verb and spells out
the thematic roles the three arguments (Trivalent verbs) may carry. Here (Saeed,
2016) shows that Williams’s (1981) suggestion of underlining the AGENT role
to reflect the fact that it is this role that typically occurs as the subject of the verb
(or “external argument” in Williams’s terminology). Clearly this is just the start
of the job that a grammatical description must do of mapping between thematic
roles and grammatical categories and structures. Our thematic grid for put above,
predicts that this verb, when saturated or filled with the correct arguments, might
form a sentence like in the following example:

Ex: John AGENT put the book THEME on the shelf LOCATION
Of course, not all nominals in a sentence are arguments of a verb and thus
specified in verbal theta-grids in the lexicon.

Saeed (2016) makes the assumption that one can employ grammatical tests
to identify arguments: for example, to distinguish between the role of argument
played by the prepositional phrase in the bathroom in following example (A)
below and its status as an non-argument in example (B):
A- [S Roland [VP put [NP the book] [PP in the bathroom] ] ]
B- [S Roland [VP read [NP the book] ] [PP in the bathroom] ]
The square brackets in example A, reflect the fact that while in the bathroom is
an argument of the verb put, explaining why it cannot be omitted:
- ∗Roland put the book.
But, (the prepositional phrase in the bathroom) It is not an argument of the verb
read, on the other hand, which can form a sentence without it:
- Roland read the book.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

This means that preposition phrases are sometimes obligatory. And

sometimes, they are optional. It depends on the requirements of the verb and the
completion of the meaning of the sentence
For example, give and put usually have a valency of 3 (trivalent), but the valents
governed by the former (subject, direct object and indirect object) are different
from those governed by the latter (subject, direct object, and locative adverbial).
Verbs which differ in this way are said to be associated with different valency
sets. The notion is similar to that used in case grammar, where cases are
sometimes referred to as valency roles.

Patterns of verb valency

1- Monovalent: verbs require only one argument, which is typically the subject
of the sentence. "For example, the valency of verbs (vanish, cry, sleep,
smile….etc. ) include only the subject element (it has a valency of one,
monovalent, or monadic).

(NP1 + Intransitive verbs.)

Ex: Girls simile.
The baby slept.
2- Divalent: verbs require two arguments, which are typically the subject and
object. For example, the valency of verbs ( check ,eat, bring ….) includes both
subject and direct object (a valency of two, Bivalent, bivalent, or dyadic).

(NP1 + Monotransitive verbs+ NP2)

Ex: They ate the meat.
3- Trivalent: verbs require three arguments. For example, the verbs "give, offered
ask, find…etc. " is trivalent, Verbs which take more than two complements are
polyvalent, or polyadic. as in

NP1+ Ditransitive verb +NP2 + NP3

EX: The teacher gave the apple to the child."
He offered her some chocolates

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

Conclusion
Thematic roles are semantic relations that noun phrases have with respect
to the action or state described by a verb. There are a number of different thematic
roles, but some of the most common are agent, patient, theme, instrument,
location, goal, source, and stimulus. Thematic roles are typically identified in
the grammar by a combination of syntactic structure and the choice of verb.

Verb valency is a crucial aspect of semantics that determines the number and
type of arguments or participants a verb requires to make a complete and
meaningful sentence. It is related to the thematic roles and semantic relations that
the verb can express. Verbs can have different valencies, such as monovalent
(one argument), divalent (two arguments), and trivalent (three arguments). The
valency of a verb is determined by its lexical meaning and can be identified by
grammatical tests.

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 Week 11 – Semantics………………… Thematic Roles and Verb Valency

Reference
 Crystal, D. (2008), A dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, (6th edition),
Blackwell, Australia
 Leech, G. (1981): Semantics, The study of meaning (2nd edition) Penguin
Books, England
 Riemer, N. (2010); Introducing Semantics; (1st edition) Cambridge, CUP
 Saeed, J.I. (2016); Semantics; (4th edition), Willy Blackwell.

Page 11 of 12
Semantic Universals

First: Semantic Universals

1. What is meant by Semantic Universals?
Leech (1985) states that linguistics talks about whether all languages share the same
ways of expressing meanings and concepts. Linguists wonder if there are universal
rules for meaning(semantics) across different languages. The first distinction is
made by Chomsky (1965) between two main parts: formal and substantive
universals. Formal universals are general rules or characteristics that any theory of
language needs to explain. Substantive universals refer to the specific elements or
components found in all languages. On the semantic level, Leech states that formal
universals are associated with “universal rules of logical structure” while substantive
universals with “universal categories of conceptual content”.
For instance, (a) a formal universal might be a general rule about how language is
structured, like how all lexical definitions in any language can be broken down into
smaller parts. (b) A substantive universal, on the other hand, could be a shared
concept across languages, such as the distinction between "animate" and
"inanimate."
Linguists generally agree on the existence of formal universals because these rules
help create a comprehensive theory of language. However, they might disagree on
substantive universals because not all languages necessarily have the same specific
elements or concepts. For example, while many languages have nouns, not all
languages may categorize objects in the same way.
The discussion often revolves around substantive universals, where there's a debate
between a strong and weak interpretation (the second distinction) of what
'universal' means. The strong version claims that all languages have a specific feature
(= all languages contain x), but observations of language variation often challenge
this. So, a weaker version suggests that there is a universal set of features, and each
language has its subset of these features (= x is a member of a universal set).
Two areas, color and kinship, have received more attention in this context because
they are relatively isolated spheres of meaning in language and have attracted
interest from anthropologists and researchers. By studying these areas across various
languages, linguists hope to draw conclusions about how much meaning might be
universally understood across different cultures (Leech, 1985).

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Semantic Universals

2. Colour Terminology: The Hypothesis of Berlin and Kay

Berlin and Kay proposed the audacious hypothesis that there is a universal set of
exactly eleven color categories from which each language draws a subset. Berlin
and Kay's claim was unusually precise: they not only stated that there are eleven
basic categories ('white,' 'black,''red, green,' 'yellow,' 'blue,' 'brown,' 'purple,' 'pink,'
'orange,' and 'grey,' but that these categories are ordered as follows:

White < Red < Green <Blue

Black Yellow

<Brown < Purple

Pink
Orange
Grey

The ordering relation referred to by the symbol < represents 'conditional

universality', and is explained as follows: for any two color categories [x] and [y],
[x] < [y] means that if a language contains y, it must also contain x).
Berlin and Kay added a further evolutionary hypothesis to the previously stated hy
pothesis, stating that the types of vocabulary as ordered above represent a fixed seq
uence of historical stages through which a language must pass as its basic vocabula
ry increases.

The conclusion that the relative uniformity of color semantics in different languages
is closely related to the uniformity of the human visual perception apparatus.
Whatever language a person speaks, he will perceive some focal color stimuli as
more salient than others, and his language will discriminate colors based on these
salient areas (Leech, 1985).

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Semantic Universals

3. Kinship Semantics: The Componential Method

However, in this case, the common ground between languages is cultural rather than
perceptual, and it is no accident that the most significant contributions to this field
have come from scholars with a primary interest in anthropology. Kinship
terminology, like color terminology, offers the fascination of a relatively
homogeneous set of lexical meanings whose organization differs markedly from
language to language, yet somehow has an underlying element of uniformity.
(Leech, 1981)
Lounsbury and W. H. Goodenough, who were the first to advance componential
analysis to a reasonable level of complexity. Later, using rules of reduction,
Lounsbury created an alternative analysis.

Kinship terminologies have historically given linguistics room to express "relativist

ideas," much like color terminologies did before because kinship categories clearly
vary greatly between languages and cultures. we see this from the fact that the 'data'
for an analysis of kinship terminology are normally presented in terms of a universal
or at least language-neutral.
set of symbols such as F = 'father', M = 'mother', B = 'brother', S =
'sister', s = 'son', d = 'daughter', H = 'husband', W = 'wife'.

3.1 The technique of componential analysis

Begins with determining a term's scope of reference using a list of "denotata," or
particular relationships expressed using the symbols above. Therefore, the range of
the English term "uncle" can be described as:
FB ('father's brother', MB (mother's brother'), FSH ('father's sister's husband') or
MSH ('mother's sister's husband'). (Leech, 1981)

Next, the analysis must establish and provide support for the important dimensions
of contrast and the meaning components that differentiate one term's use from
another.

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Semantic Universals

This involves identifying shared characteristics among all of a term's denotata. (as
'male' 'collateral' and one generation above the person from whom the relation is
being traced' are features common to the four denotata of uncle listed above); so that
the disjunctive referential specification of a term (as '*' OR 'V' OR 'z'...) is translated
into a componential, conjunctive listing of features (a + b + c).

The only thing that separates "brother" from "sister," uncle from aunt, and so on is
the dimension of sex (Male/-Male), which is clearly significant as a distinguishing
factor in English. The contrast between lineal kin related by vertical descent on the
family tree and collateral kin whose connection entails a horizontal link between two
siblings on the family tree is another aspect of English kinship usage that is
significant. A father's family is lineal; a daughter's family is maternal; brothers'
family is collateral; nephews' family is collateral; cousins' family is collateral; and
so on. Part of Lounsbury's analysis of the kinship semantics of the Seneca, an
American Indian (Iroquois) tribe, is presented here, greatly simplified, as an example
of the method (Lounsbury, 1964a). Part of the data Lounsbury uses for his analysis
(Leech, 1981).

The glosses "father," "cousin," and so on should not be confused with English
translations of the Seneca words; rather, they are merely roughly corresponding
labels that were selected based on the assumption that the English term would
represent the closest relative indicated by the Seneca term. Similar to the labels
"black," "white," and so forth for color categories, these are only helpful
terminologies.
Rather than following Lounsbury's argument step by step, I will just show and
explain the findings of his analysis, altering the symbols to make them more
comprehensible ,has already made assumptions about the data to the extent that it
has indicated certain groupings, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Different generation groups
are distinguished by the solid horizontal lines as follows:
Members of A, B are one generation senior to ego
Members of E, F are one generation junior to ego
Members of C, D are of the same generation as ego.

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Semantic Universals

These characteristics can be represented, in that order, by the symbols

>GENERATION senior generation, <GENERATION "junior generation," and =
GENERATION "same generation."My father," will have the feature
>GENERATION, whereas the definition of "my son," will have the feature <
GENERATION. Two of the other dimensions of contrast are quite simple to
identify. For instance, in terms of sex, term I 'father' contrasts with term 2'mother,'
and term 3 'uncle' contrasts with term 4 anunt. (Leech, 1981)
The contrast that sets Group A apart from Group B, Group C apart from Group D,
and Group E apart from Group F is the most elusive. The English 'translations' are
undoubtedly not helpful in this case. Aside from generation and sex, collaterality is
the primary dimension of contrast in English and other widely spoken languages.
For example, it is this that essentially separates the meanings of uncle and father or
daughter and niece. Under the same kinship category in the Seneca data, kin with
varying levels of collaterality are grouped together, such as F (father), FB (father's
brother), and FFSs (father's father's sister's son).
In a manner that is comparable to how Groups A and B contrast with one another.
In Group E, the ego is the same sex as the alter's linking parent; that is, the final
symbol in each formula is male for a male ego, and female for a female ego. (Once
more, the fact that the ego and the parent ofalter are the same satisfies the criterion
of equivalency of sex in the case of simple son and daughter relationships.) However,
the linking parent of the alter and the ego are different in sex in Group F.
What separates Group A from Group B, Group C from Group D, and Group E from
Group F is the contrast that is hardest to understand.. The English 'translations' are
undoubtedly not helpful in this case. Aside from generation and sex, collaterality is
the primary dimension of contrast in English and other widely spoken languages.
For example, it is this that essentially separates the meanings of uncle and father or
daughter and niece. Family members with varying levels of collaterality are grouped
together under the same kinship category in the Seneca data, such as F (father), FB
(father's brother), and FFSs (son of the father's father's sister). (Leech, 1981)

[The equivalency-of-sex criterion is vacuously satisfied in the case of the simple

father and mother relations F and M, as alter and the linking parent are one and the
same person.] As can be observed, the sex of the italicized relations for terms I and
2 is the same. In contrast, terms 3 and 4 are distinct.

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Semantic Universals

Now that we have a closer look at Groups E and F, we can see that their differences
from one another are comparable to those between Groups A and B. In Group E, the
ego is the same sex as the alter's linking parent; for a male ego, this means that the
final symbol in each formula is also male. That the denotation of the terms for son'
and daughter' varies according to whether ego is male or female. But in spite of this,
it is possible to give a unified definition for each term: 'daughter', for example, it is
sufficient for a definition to specify, in addition to >GENERATION -MALE, that
alter's linking parent is of the same sex asego.
'Brother'/*sister' and 'cousin' terms from Groups C and D make up the third and last
set of terms to look at. We observe that there is a significant difference between the
terms "cousin" and "brother" and "sister." The linking parent of the alter and the
linking parent of the ego for Group C are the same sex, but not for Group D. For
instance, FSs, the son of the father's sister, is classified as a "cousin," whereas FBs,
the son of the father's brother, is classified as a "brother": Here, the question is
whether the denotative formula's first and penultimate symbols correspond in terms
of sex. (When referring to direct siblings, B and S can be expanded.) (Leech, 1981)

Lounsbury concludes his analysis by stating that since these are all examples of the
same semantic contrast, the analvsis can be reduced to a single componential
opposition, which we can now denote as + PARALLEL and define as follows:

+PARALLEL: There is equivalence of sex between the two kin of the generation
above ego or alter (which ever of those is junior)'
-PARALLEL: (The negative of the above)

4. A Predication-Componential Analysis of Kinship Semantics

It is a theoretical framework that explores the structure and meaning of kinship
terms in different languages. It aims to understand how kinship terms are
constructed and how their meanings are derived through the combination of
componential elements.
In this analysis, kinship terms are treated as complex predicates composed of
smaller semantic components. These components can include features such as

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Semantic Universals

gender, generation, consanguinity (blood relations), affinity (relations through

marriage), and other culturally specific attributes.
The predication-componential approach emphasizes the importance of context and
cultural factors in understanding kinship semantics. It recognizes that kinship terms
are not universally fixed but vary across languages and cultures. The analysis takes
into account the cultural norms, social structures, and kinship systems of specific
communities to interpret the semantic components and their combinations.
For example, in English, the term "brother" typically refers to a male sibling, but it
can also be used to refer to a male cousin or a close male friend. The predication-
componential analysis would examine the semantic components of this term, such
as male gender and consanguinity, and how they interact to create the meaning of
"brother" in different contexts.
Overall, a Predication-Componential Analysis of Kinship Semantics offers a
valuable tool for understanding the complex meanings and variations of kinship
terms and their significance within different cultural contexts.
5. Kinship & Semantic Universals
In one way, the predicational analysis of English kinship semantics is similar to the
purely componential analysis of Lounsbury's Senecan analysis: it can be viewed as
bridging the gap between the culturally relative factors of kinship classification that
determine how generation seniority is determined and the culturally very general, if
not universal, categories of sex and parenthood involved in the "nuclear family." A
specific language deals with consanguinity, collaterality, and other abstract variables
of that type. The two oppositions that we began the second analysis with, +Male/-
Male And -+Parent/+-Parent, are easily perceived as strong universals, that is, as
semantic contrasts that exist in all languages. However, it appears that there are
counter-instances to every such tenable generalization in the anthropological
literature. (Leech, 1981)

If we define the fundamental oppositions between "sex" and "parenthood" as having

biological roots, and the derived relations of siblinghood, ancestry, and cousinship
as being defined in terms of rights, obligations, and other social rather than
biological correlates, then the analysis of English kinship usage provided in this
chapter allows for both "biological" and "social" views. Thus, the socially
institutionalized superstructure of kinship is derived from a core of biologically
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Semantic Universals

founded relations by virtue of the rules of implication. To account for situations in

which kinship ties exist in social terms (such as through adoption) without any
underlying biological relationship, it is appropriate that these rules be written as uni-
directional entailments rather than bi-directional entailments.

The rules of implication when considering implication rules, one can express how
different linguistic conceptualizations of kinship differ from one another. The
'parallel'/*cross' opposition in Seneca kinship, for instance, terminology would have
to be instituted through a rule roughly as follows:
Rule of implication (D):

(a)'x. LINEAL .. LINEAL . y entails

a MALE y GENERATION y GENERATION a MALE
x PEER
+PARALLL

(b)'x. LINEAL .. LINEAL . y entails

a MALE y GENERATION y GENERATION b MALE
x PEER
-PARALLEL

Here a commonly used convention in linguistics is used: variables ranging over the
terms of an opposition are indicated by the Greek symbols a and §. As a result, a
MALE...a MALE denotes non-matching features of sex, whereas a MALE...a
MALE describes matching features. The symbol yGENERATION... y
GENERATION denotes an equivalent number of generations. As vital to the
Senecan system as "sibling" is to the English one, the rule defines the concept of
"generation-peer (Leech, 1981).

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Semantic Universals

" The definitions of specimens go like this:

(a) The +>PEER relation is reflexive as well as symmetrical, as defined above
includes one's father in the narrow sense of male
parent'
(b) We can define each term "elder sibling" or "younger sibling" by two distinct
downgraded predications: one relating ego to alter as regards kinship, and one
relating them in terms of relative age. Keep in mind that the definitions given
above, like all the definitions of kinship terms before them, are simplified
renderings of downgraded predications. This solves the issue of how to make the
*older than/younger than relation stretch directly between ego and alter, whereas
the'sibling' relation only indirectly links them. This would have arisen if we
attempted to condense all of the meaning into a single downgraded prediction. The
meaning of "elder sister" will therefore be clarified by three distinct features, of
which two are reduced expectations:
-MALE(x),(y)
(where X = *who is child of parallel peer of parent of { X ) ego')
(where Y= 'who is older than ego')
The case for universal kinship semantics is more difficult to make than it is for color
semantics due to the cultural nature of the phenomenon being studied. Discussing
"universal kinship categories" raises the question of whether kinship concepts have
cultural universals, or if the cultural realities they refer to are consistent across
cultural boundaries. Even on such a basic question as whether the term "kinship"
refers to anything that can be described in a way that is culturally neutral, there is
room for doubt. However, those who lean toward a weak universalist perspective
philosophically will discover that it helps them recognize a shared foundation in the
strikingly similar conceptualizations of kinship that emerge in environments with
different linguistic and geographic backgrounds. (Leech, 1981)

6. Rules of Implication
Rules of implication might be preferred to call 'semantic transformations'. Certain
areas of meaning, such as Kinship, require implication rules because providing a
unitary would be impossible. A specific meaning has a finite definition. These rules

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Semantic Universals

are proposed with reluctance because they destroy the one-to-one relationship of
formulae to meanings, which we would prefer to preserve. However, there appear to
be many areas of lexical meaning where alternative conceptualizations are possible,
necessitating the establishment of special implication rules. Aside from kinship, a
simpler example of semantic overlap is the relationship between the polarities
'warm'/'cool' and 'hot'/cold. Special rules of implication would be required to explain
facts like the approximate synonymy of to convey this relationship between the two
oppositions. The weather is hot and very warm, as opposed to the weather being
slightly hot and warm. The polarities 'like'/'dislike' and 'love'/'hate' have a similar
overlap (Leech,1985).

Conclusion
After understanding Chomsky's idea about two types of universals, we found that
the second type can be split further into 'strong universals' (things every language
has) and 'weak universals' (things common to languages but not present in all). An
example of a 'weak universal' is Berlin and Kay's theory that there are eleven main
color groups, ordered in a way that one color category might rely on the existence
of other categories. However, calling this idea 'weak' isn't quite right because it
actually predicts strongly what basic colors any language can or cannot have. For
instance, in Berlin and Kay's theory, "black" and "white" are considered strong
universals.
In kinship terms, there's a debate but some evidence leans towards a 'weak
universalist' viewpoint. This means accepting that certain concepts like parenthood,
sex, and marriage are common to most languages without being specific to any one
language. This suggests that the contrast between strong and weak universals might
not be absolute but more about how much they apply.
The concepts of color and kinship imply that the difference between strong and weak
universals might not be a strict yes-or-no situation but rather a matter of how much
they apply.

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Semantic variation

Second: Semantic variation

Riemer (2010) explains semantic typology, ‘which studies possible
constraints on meaning variation and seeks out possible semantic universals in
various semantic fields such as the body, colour, space and motion’.

1- Body parts
Languages divide the body into parts in different ways (this despite the fact
that all human have the same basic body structure). This suggest that there is no
universal way to divide the body, and that the divisions of the world presupposed
in familiar languages are not necessarily universal. For example, the Tidore
language (Indonesia) has no word for body, speakers must either use the
Indonesian word badan or speak non-literary using the Tidore word mansia,
which literally means “person” or “human”. (Riemer, 2010).

Languages do not always favor lexicalization of body-part categories at the

level of the limb or other major whole-body part (head, trunk).
For example, in Jahai (Mon-Khmer, Malaysia /southern Thailand), there is no
word for “mouth”, “face”, or “leg”. Instead, there are many more specific terms
for different parts of the body, such as “wis” (frontal teeth), “nus” (upper lip),
and “myka?” (molar tooth) (Riemer, 2010).

2- Colour vocabulary
We all experience the same colours, but different languages categorize and
name them differently. ''The difficulty of translating colour terms from one
language to another has often been commented on. There is no simple equivalent
for one language’s colour words in another.'' This suggests that colour categories
are not universal, but are created by the specific language we speak. In other
words, language shapes our perception of colour, not the other way around
(Riemer, 2010).
Berlin and Kay challenged the idea of complete colour term relativism by
proposing the concept of basic colour terms (BCTs). These are highly salient,
monomorphemic terms that apply to any object, not just specific ones. BCTs are
distinct from non-BCTs, which are less common, can be derived from other

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Semantic variation

colour terms, or apply only to specific objects (e.g., the word "blonde" primarily
refers to the colour of hair and furniture. It does not qualify as a basic colour term
because its applicability is limited to specific objects. This framework provides a
basis for comparing colour terminology across languages with some level of
universality (Riemer, 2010).
Different languages have different numbers of basic color words. Some
languages only have two, while others have more than eleven. Scientists studied
how people use these basic color words across many languages. They found that
people from different cultures agree on the "best example" of each basic color,
even if their languages have different words for it. This suggests that our brains
are wired to see and understand colors in a similar way, no matter where we come
from (Riemer, 2010).

According to Riemer, (2010), Out of many colors (330), only a few (30) are
important "focal hues". These important colors are the same in different
languages, even if the exact shades they represent vary slightly. This suggests that
our brains are wired to see and categorize colors in a similar way, regardless of
our culture. This shared understanding of color helps us communicate and
understand each other, even if we speak different languages.

Berlin and Kay discovered that the number of basic colour terms (BCTs)
in a language predicts the specific terms it will have. Their research revealed that
languages don't arbitrarily choose BCTs, but follow strict constraints in their focal
hues. They proposed an evolutionary sequence of BCT development, where
vocabularies started with just two terms and gradually expanded, splitting
existing categories into new ones. This suggests a limited range of possible colour
categorization systems across languages, highlighting the underlying universality
of human colour perception despite diverse terminology (Riemer, 2010).

Berlin and Kay's colour categorization system identifies seven stages, each
adding more basic colour terms (BCTs) to the repertoire. While acknowledging
that speakers can still perceive and reference colours not explicitly named in their
language's stage, the system highlights how languages prioritize specific colours
as BCTs.

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Riemer, (2010) stated that while broadly confirmed, the seven-stage

typology faces several challenges:
1. Languages often change, making it difficult to determine their exact
stage. For example, Hungarian has both "piros" and "vörös" for red, which doesn't
fit the original system.
2. Languages like Yélî Dnye have no basic colour terms by Berlin and
Kay's criteria, as their colour terms are often object names ("mtyemtye" for red
comes from "mtye", a red parrot).
3. Parameters like brightness may be crucial for some languages,
challenging the original decision to exclude it.
4. Examples like Yélî Dnye led to the typology being seen as a strong
tendency rather than a universal rule.

3- Deictic motion
Deixis is an important field in modern linguistics particularly in semantics
and pragmatics. Deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein the meaning of certain
words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. There are
basically five categories of deixis, namely person, space, time, social, and
discourse deixis. Deictic verbs, also known as deictic motion verbs, refer to any
verb that marks the direction in which an entity is moving such as “come “and
“go”. Strictly speaking, deictic verbs fall into the category of space deixis and
remain a relatively small research field compared with other types of deixis.
(Riemer, 2010).

Talmy (1985) formalises a situation containing motion as a motion event.

The basic motion event is analysed to consist of an object (the figure) and its
movement through a path (the path) with respect to another reference object (the
ground). These components can be identified in the following sentence:
The bottle moved into the cove.
[Figure] [Motion] [Path] [Ground]

Some motion verbs, e.g. enter and exit, express not only the fact of motion,
as in the case of moved in the example above, but also (part of) the path
information, such as ‘into/out of an enclosure’. These motion verbs, which
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include the path of motion in their lexical meaning, are called path-conflating
motion verbs. According to Talmy, deictic motion verbs are a kind of Path-
conflating verbs with a special choice of the Path and the ground, and “the Deictic
component of Path typically has only the two member notions, ‘toward the
speaker’ and ‘in a direction other than toward the speaker’” (Talmy 2000).

4- Lexicalization Patterns in motion verbs

Come and go differ in the type of path they express: in verb come, the path
is oriented towards the deictic centre, whereas in verb go it need not be. Path is
the route traversed by the object in motion, it is one of the major elements of a
motion situation (Riemer, 2010).
The four elements of motion verbs are motion, path, manner and figure (the
moving object), which Talmy (1985) takes to be the essential components
described by motion verbs.
In English, motion verbs often do not express path in the verb root, as come and
go do. Mostly, the path element is expressed in a preposition or ‘particle’ (to
make phrasal verbs.), such as in, out, away, along, down, through etc.
The manner of motion is expressed by the verb root, such as (crawl, run, roll,
walk, skip, fly, float, stroll, tumble.). In themselves, these verbs do not convey
anything about the path which the motion takes place: to express this, it is
necessary to specify the path using a directional expression, such as; crawl off,
run out of the room, fly over the Alps. (Riemer, 2010)

Talmy hypothesized the existence of three basic combinations of the possible

components of the motion event, depending on whether the basic motion element
is paired with manner, path or figure (Riemer, 2010).

 Motion + manner: run, slide, bounce, waddle, spin, totter, hop, stroll,
amble. . .
 Motion + path: enter, exit, come, go, leave, skirt . . .

 Motion + figure: The third lexicalization pattern, is the least represented

in English.

Talmy proposed a fundamental typological difference between two types of

languages.

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i- Verb framed languages: Languages (like Spanish) in which the path

component is lexicalized in the verb root itself. This means, path information is
integrated within the verb root itself. Examples: Romance languages (Spanish,
Italian, French). The verb root itself encodes both the manner and the path of the
motion.

ii-Satellite-framed languages: Languages (like English) in which the path

component of motion expressions is expressed in a satellite element. Path
information is expressed through supplementary elements like prepositions or
particles. Examples: English, Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Danish).
The verb root primarily expresses the manner of the motion, while the path is
conveyed by separate elements like prepositions. For example, in English
language the verb phrases (move out, move away, move up, move in). There are
different paths (directions) for one verb.

iii- Some linguists claim that there is a third type of languages, which is called
equipollent languages. This is a type in which both path and manner are treated
in the same way by the language’s morphosyntax. Most equipollent languages
are ones with serial verbs, i.e. verb complexes consisting of several independent
verbs, each making a separate semantic contribution, as in the following sentence
from Papiamentu (a Spanish Creole language with mix of Portuguese and Dutch,
spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.)

Ex: e-labulabai; means ‘he flew away’

The verb phrase contains a sequence of equally central and morphosyntactically

equivalent verb morphemes ‘fly, go’, which does not admit any sort of verb
satellite distinction on Talmy’s criteria. (Riemer, 2010)

It's important to note that classifying a language as verb-framed or

satellite-framed does not imply that all motion verbs in that language fit that
category or every motion verb in the language is of the appropriate type; it is a
question of which type is most characteristic of the motion expressions in the
language. Talmy defines ‘characteristic’ as meaning,

(i) That the verb-type is the one found in colloquial, not literary, language. In
other words, Colloquial Use: The characteristic type is typically found in
everyday, spoken language, rather than in literary or formal contexts.

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(ii) That it occurs frequently, which means, frequency: The characteristic type
occurs more frequently than the other type in the language's motion expressions.

(iii) That it is pervasive, meaning that a wide range of different types of motion
are expressed by it (Riemer, 2010).

5- Spatial reference

Is a feature found in all languages that allows for indicating the positional
relationships of objects? In English, terms like "left" and "right," and "front" and
"back" are used to designate different regions of space, utilizing the body's planes
as a reference (e.g., "it's on the left" or "at the front"). This type of spatial
reference is considered fundamental and has been presumed to be innate and
universal. Immanuel Kant, an Enlightenment philosopher, regarded space as a
mental intuition inherent to the mind's comprehension of the world (Riemer,
2010).

However, cross-linguistic research challenges the assumption of

universality. It reveals that languages employ alternative systems of spatial
reference beyond the familiar English and European approach. A comprehensive
study conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, as reported by Pederson et al. (1998) and Levinson (2003),
examined how speakers of different languages describe the spatial relationships
between simple objects (Riemer, 2010).

Imagine you're giving directions to someone to find a specific building. You

might say, "The building is located to the left of the park." In this example, the
term "left" is used as a spatial reference to indicate the direction in which the
building can be found relative to the park. It provides a clear and concise way to
communicate the spatial relationship between the park and the building.

Another example could be: "The store is in front of the library." Here, "in front
of" is used as a spatial reference to describe the relative position of the store with
respect to the library. It conveys that the store is situated ahead or facing the
direction of the library (Riemer, 2010).

These experiments explored the varying frames of reference used in languages

for spatial location. A frame of reference serves as a cognitive and linguistic
framework that individuals use to define and describe spatial relationships. It
provides a system for orienting oneself and understanding the positions of objects
or locations in relation to each other. Different frames of reference can be

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employed, each emphasizing different aspects of space and relying on distinct

reference points (Riemer, 2010).

One commonly discussed distinction in frames of reference is the egocentric

versus allocentric frame. In an egocentric frame of reference, spatial relationships
are defined with respect to the observer's own body. For example, "left" and
"right" are egocentric terms as they depend on the observer's own perspective. In
contrast, an allocentric frame of reference uses external reference points or
landmarks to establish spatial relationships. For instance, "north," "south," "east,"
and "west" are allocentric terms that rely on cardinal directions. Another
important distinction is the intrinsic versus relative frame of reference. In an
intrinsic frame, the spatial relationships between objects are defined based on
their inherent properties or intrinsic characteristics (Riemer, 2010).

For example, describing an object as being "on top" or "underneath" another

object relies on an intrinsic frame of reference. In a relative frame of reference,
the spatial relationships are defined in relation to other objects. For instance,
describing an object as being "next to" or "behind" another object relies on a
relative frame of reference. Different languages and cultures may have
preferences for specific frames of reference, and individuals within a culture may
internalize and use those frames consistently (Riemer, 2010).

- Conclusion

Different languages see the world differently!

 Languages divide the body into parts in different ways, and some even lack
words for basic body parts.

 Languages categorize colours differently, and some languages have many

more colour words than others.

 Languages describe movement differently, with some languages focusing

on the direction of movement and others on the way something is moving.

 Languages even use different frames of reference to talk about where

things are, like using the speaker's own body as a reference point or using
landmarks.

All these differences show us that language isn't just a tool for communication,
but it also shapes how we think about the world around us.

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References
 Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
 Talmy, L. 2000. Typology and process in concept structuring (Toward a
cognitive semantics, vol. 2). Cambridge–London: The MIT Press.

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Third: Semantic Change

Meaning change is everywhere. Even the most basic elements of vocabulary,

which might seem conceptually unchangeable, are subject to meaning shifts over
time. In earlier forms of English, "and" had a second meaning, equivalent to "if,"
as shown in this example:

"And I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread."
(Shakespeare, Love's Labours Lost, VI 71–2)

Meaning change often seems chaotic and specific, driven by social and
cultural factors rather than language itself. For example, "fly" now means traveling
in an airplane, a new meaning since the 20th century due to modern air travel, not
any fundamental change in the word's sense of "travel through the air." This
change is primarily driven by the word's new denotation, not by language itself.
(Riemer, 2010)

An important characteristic of semantic change is that it crucially involves

polysemy. A word does not suddenly change from one meaning to another;
instead, it acquires new polysemous senses while retaining its original ones. For
example, the French noun "glace" originally meant "ice" but later acquired the
additional sense of "ice cream/iced drink" in the seventeenth century. This process
is more common in semantic change than the loss of original meanings. (ibid)

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The Traditional Categories

In the early studies of semantic change, researchers like Bréal (1897) established
broad categories to describe different types of change. The primary goal of these
categories was to develop a typology of semantic changes rather than providing
explanations for why these changes occur.

According to Riemer (2010), there are four traditional categories of semantic

change:

1- Specialization (narrowing): refers to the process when a word narrows its

range of reference.in another word, this occurs when a word's meaning becomes
more specific.

For instance: English liquor used to refer to liquid of any kind: the reference to
alcohol was a subsequent specialization. Another example: the word "meat" once
referred to any food, but now it specifically refers to animal flesh.

2- Generalization(broadening): the opposite of specialization, occurs when a

word's meaning expands over time to encompass a wider range of referents. This
process enriches language by allowing a single term to apply to diverse but related
concepts.
For instance, the word "mouse." Initially, "mouse" referred solely to a small
rodent. However, with the advent of computer technology, the term "mouse" has
been generalized to include the computer peripheral device used for navigation. In
this case, the word "mouse" has broadened its meaning to include a new referent
that was not originally associated with the term.

3- Ameliorization: is a type of semantic change in which the meaning of a word

undergoes a positive shift, acquiring a more favorable or positive connotation over
time. This change can occur through various linguistic and societal factors.
For instance, the word "awesome." Originally, "awesome" meant to inspire awe or
fear and was associated with something that evoked a sense of dread or reverence.
However, in contemporary usage, "awesome" has undergone amelioration and is
commonly used to express enthusiasm, admiration, or approval. The word now
carries a positive connotation, indicating something remarkable, impressive, or
enjoyable.

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4_Pejorization: is a type of semantic change in which the meaning of a word

undergoes a negative shift, acquiring a more derogatory or negative connotation
over time. This change can occur due to various linguistic, cultural, or social
factors.

For example: the word "silly." Originally, "silly" meant blessed or innocent.
However, over time, the term has undergone pejoration and now carries a more
negative connotation. "Silly" is often used to describe something or someone as
foolish, lacking seriousness, or deserving of ridicule.

But there is a problem that the traditional four categories for describing
meaning change (generalization, specialization, amelioration, and pejoration) are
not adequate to explain all of the complexities and diversity of the types of
meaning change encountered in the history of languages. For example, how do we
explain the shift of Latin ur "spring" to the meaning "summer" in many Romance
languages (Romanian vară, Spanish verano, Portuguese verão)? This seems to fit
none of the four categories that the author has mentioned.

The solution for that problem is to recognize specialization and generalization as

just two types of metonymic change. Metonymy is the process of sense
development in which a word shifts to a contiguous meaning. Contiguous can have
a number of meanings, but the essential idea is that two senses are contiguous if
their referents are actually next to each other (either spatially or temporally), or if
the senses underlying the words are closely related conceptually. Consequently,
that many types of meaning change that cannot otherwise be accommodated can be
described as metonymic (Riemer, 2010).

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Mechanisms and Pathways of Semantic Change:

In the study of semantic change, the descriptive approach has been

complemented by pragmatic and cognitive approaches. These approaches focus on
the mechanisms that drive semantic change and the regularities that can be
observed in the ways that meanings change over time.

Conventionalization of Implicature

One influential approach to semantic change is the conventionalization of

implicature theory. This theory proposes that semantic change occurs when an
implicature, or an inferred meaning, becomes conventionalized and lexicalized as
part of a word's meaning ( Riemer, 2010).

For example, the verb "go" can take on a future meaning in certain grammatical
contexts, such as "I am going to watch some TV." In this context, the verb "go"
carries an implicature of futurity, which can eventually become conventionalized
as part of the word's meaning.

Riemer discusses Traugott's proposal of several general tendencies of semantic

change, which include...:

1.Semantic Internalization: Meanings based on the external described situation

shift to meanings based on the internal (evaluative/perceptual/cognitive) described
situation. Many languages show evidence of this type of change. The change in the
Old English verb felan from the meaning ‘touch’ to the meaning ‘feel’ is a case in
point: the earlier meaning makes no reference to the internal psychological
domain, while the later one does

2. Subjectification: Meanings tend to become increasingly based in the speaker's

subjective belief state or attitude toward the proposition. Ameliorization and
pejorization are prime examples of subjectifi cation: The word "boor" originally
meant "farmer." However, over time, it has become associated with negative
qualities like rudeness and crudeness. This is because speakers began to add their
own negative opinions about farmers to the word's meaning. As a result, the
original meaning of "farmer" has been replaced by the speaker's subjective
evaluation of "crude person."shifts from the realm of public observable facts to the
subjective opinion and assessment of the speaker

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Viberg's Hierarchy of Perception Verbs

Riemer also mentions Åke Viberg's proposal of a hierarchy of perception

verbs, which asserts that the visual modality of perception always serves as the
source but never the target of polysemous processes involving other perceptual
meanings. This hierarchy can also be interpreted diachronically to impose
limitations on the potential direction of meaning evolution.( Riemer, 2010)

Mind-as-Body Metaphor

Riemer also discusses Eve Sweetser's proposal regarding the extension of

"see" verbs to include "know/understand" meanings in various languages.
Sweetser's proposal revolves around the idea of the mind-as-body metaphor, which
suggests that concrete physical experiences serve as a model for expressing
abstract mental concepts.( Riemer, 2010)

In summary, the pragmatic and cognitive approaches to semantic change

provide insights into the mechanisms and regularities of how meanings change
over time. These approaches complement the descriptive approach and offer a
deeper understanding of the processes involved in semantic change.

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Semantic Change

Grammaticalization is a specific context in which semantic change occurs. It

involves the transformation of open-class content words (such as nouns, verbs, and
adjectives) into closed-class function forms (including prepositions, conjunctions,
pronouns, particles, and demonstratives). This process entails a loss of meaning
and a narrowing of grammatical contexts. A notable example can be found in many
European languages, where the word for "circle" has grammaticalized into a
preposition meaning "around" (Riemer, 2010). This demonstrates how semantic
change can occur within the framework of grammatical structure, leading to the
evolution of language over time.

According to Saeed (2009), the term "grammaticalization" refers to the process of

making semantic distinctions obligatory in a language. Grammaticalization
encompasses both semantic change and semantic variation. An example of
semantic change can be seen in the English word 'you,' which has evolved from
having distinct forms ('thou' and 'ye') that marked singular and plural number,
respectively, to a single form that does not indicate number at all. This illustrates
the loss of a grammaticalized feature, namely number, over time in English.

On the other hand, the Arabic words 'anta' and 'anti' exemplify semantic variation
as they mark a grammaticalized feature, namely gender, which English lacks.
These words mean 'you (singular)' in Arabic but differ based on the gender of the
addressee. This demonstrates how different languages can exhibit varying degrees
of grammaticalization within the same semantic domain. In summary,
grammaticalization is a process that encompasses both semantic change and
semantic variation in language, involving the development and evolution of
grammatical distinctions over time.

Conclusion

Semantic change is a complex process driven by social and cultural factors.

It involves the acquisition of new senses while retaining old ones, and traditional
categories like specialization and generalization provide a framework for
understanding it. However, metonymy and various mechanisms like
conventionalization, subjectification, and grammaticalization also contribute to
semantic change. Overall, it highlights the dynamic nature of meaning in language.

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