Semantika – 2.

seminar

Introduction to semantics

Semantics is a part of linguistics (the scientific study of language). Semantics is the scientific
study of meaning in language.
He is a brave man. He is a brave man (said ironically).
We distinguish between the general meaning of a word or sentence (semantics) and the
meaning it has in certain specific circumstances and context (pragmatics).
Branches of semantics:
- Lexical (meaning of words)
- Grammatical (Influence of grammatic structure on meanings. Studies the meaning as
conveyed by different grammatical means). John loves football. John loved football.
- Logical (studies the meaning with the help of mathematical logic)
- Linguistic pragmatics (aspects of meaning dependent on context)
What is meaning?
A vague concept, many different opinions on this question. How do we define the meaning
of a word?
E.g. define the meaning of the word chair
- A seat, especially for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the
back and often having rests for the arms.
- A seat for one person that has a back and usually four legs.
Some abstract meanings cannot be expressed easily, and not all things are fully defined in
the dictionary, and not all definitions always apply.
Do words have fixed meaning?
Meaning changes all the time and over time.
E.g .
- awful = full of awe
- With = in Old English meant against, in O.E. Mid meant with
- nice = meant foolish and silly
- Naughty = you had naught, nothing, then it meant evil or immoral, now it means
badly behaved
Historical semantics – study of the change of meaning in time
Types of change (Bloomfield, 1933.):
Narrowing
- Meat – Food
Widening
- Bird – nestling (small type of bird)
Metaphor
- Bitter – biting
Metonymy (Taking a part of something as a whole)
- Jaw – cheek
Synecdoche
- Town – fence
Hyperbole
- Astound – strike with thunder
Litotes
- Kill – torment
Degeneration
- Knave – boy, male servant
Elevation
- Knight – boy

Often changes result from Taboo – in order not to use taboo words speakers use
euphemisms, which are socially acceptable. The most common taboo words are related to
sex, reproduction, excretion, bodily functions, death.
- Cock – in AmE no one uses it for referring to a male chicken, it's been replaced by
rooster
- I have to urinate – the phrase I have to powder my nose once considered as polite
substitute
How do we construct the meaning?
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
- Syntactically correct, semantically anomalous
She then fetches a live bird that she herself has partially deplumed, so that it is unable to fly
with ease.
- Syntactically correct, semantically correct
We use both our knowledge of the world and the language to define a meaning.
Do the form of a word and the meaning of a word match each other? What is the nature of
their relationship?
Not necessarily. Most often not. The relationship is arbitrary. There is, generally, no
connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.
e.g. cheese – sir – formaggio – Kase – queijo
Onomatopeic words have a less arbitrary connection.
Crash, croak, groan, hiss, purr, buzz, boom
There are many similarities among onomatopeic words in different languages.
e.g. Neigh, njiha, hi-hing (Korean) – cock-a-doodle-doo, kuriku, cocorico (French), chichirichi
(Italian)
 Semantika – 2. predavanje
Semiotics
- Scientific study of signs
- Language is a sign system
- Two types of signs: Iconic, arbitrary
- Iconic: form mirrors meaning: onomatopeic words display some iconicity: whoosh,
wheeze, howl, bang
- Arbitrary: no correspondence between form and meaning: the majority of words in a
language are arbitrary
Ogden and Richards semiotic triangle:
- They were semioticians interested in meaning in natural language – language as a
sign system.

Thought or reference (koncept)

Symbolises (a causal relation) Refers to (other causal relation)

Symbol (jezik) Stands for (an implied relation – dotted line base) Referent (objekt)

Symbol – any item of language (the word, sentence)

Reference (thought) – is a mental vision that we get when someone says something –
concept
Referent – whatever things or situations in the world the language is about (the object)

What is the relationship between the symbol and the referent?

- There is no direct relationship between the word or the symbol and the
extralinguistic thing or referent denoted by it. Words have no direct relation to the
things they stand for. No direct link between language and the world.
 - The relationship between the two is indirect and arbitrated/mediated by a concept
or thought/reference.

- Meaning does not depend on the word; it depends on the people who use the word.
Language is a result of processes in the human mind.

- In order to define and describe meaning we have to take into account language, the
human mind and the world.

Basic concepts in semantics

Lexeme:
- An abstract unit which unites all morphological variants of a word
- It is also the basic unit of lexical semantics
- An abstract linguistic unit with different variants (analogous to phoneme or
morpheme)
- e.g. Dog and dogs are two different words, but forms of the same lexeme, covered
under a single dictionary entry
- e.g. go, goes, went, to go are all the forms of the verb to go, als ocovered under a
single dictionary entry
Sense and reference: two different aspects of meaning
Reference:
- the relationship between the linguistic elements (words, sentences, etc.) and the
non – linguistic world of experience (the entity in the world to which it refers).
Language ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- World

Sense:
- the relationship between the linguistic elements themselves (mostly the words) – no
extra linguistic relations.
Language ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Nothing in the Real World

- A word can have sense, but no referent in the real world. (e.g. unicorn, dragon,
leprechaun, mermaid)
- Words can have different senses, but the same referent (e.g. morning star = evening
star = Venus)
Words/ Expressions can have variable reference (e.g. the President of the United States)
 A word's REFERENT – the particular thing, person, place etc. which an expression stands
for on a specific occasion of use.
The SENSE of a lexeme – the general meaning or the concept underlying the word. It
doesn't change every time the word takes on a new referent.
The queen has fallen off the table.
Queen: two senses, monarch or chess piece.
If we take Monarch we can have:
- Elizabeth II
- Victoria
- Margareth II
- Etc., more possibilities, 3 or more referents
If talking about an event at Buckingham Palace that has happened recently, the referent
of the word is queen Elizabeth II.
If talking about an event at B.P. that happened some 150 years ago, referent is Victoria
If talking about an event at the Danish Court, referent is Margareth of Denmark
In all of the abovementioned cases, sense of the word queen is female monarch
Chess piece:
- If talking about a game of chess, the referent of the word queen is a particular chess
piece
- If talking about a game of chess, the sense of the word queen is „Second highest
ranking piece in a game of chess“

Denotation and connotation:

Denotation:
- It identifies the central aspect of word meaning
- A word „denotes“ or „refers to“ something in our experience of the world. E.g. the
word cat denotes a particular kind of animal
Connotation:
- Refers to the personal aspect of meaning, emotional force, level of formality, its
character as a euphimism, etc.
- E.g. to die, to perish, to pass away, to kick the bucket – all refer to the same event,
but different stylistically
- Relates to the associations that a word has over and above its denotation
- E.g. the word diamond denotes „a precious stone“ but connotes luxury
- Another item that is associated with connotation is emotive meaning. Apart from
carrying denotative meaning, some words have emotive connotations. Sometimes
the emotive aspect of the word's meaning becomes more important in a word's use
than the denotation of the word. These words are often used in political slogans and
for marketing purposes.
- e.g. freedom, democracy, equality, justice, progress, law, etc.
- e.g. real, fresh, pure, genuine, healthy, etc.
 Semantika – 3. predavanje
Semantic change
- Refers to any change in the meaning(s) of a word over the course of time
- Also called semantic shift, lexical change and semantic progression
Common types of semantic change
- Amelioration
- Pejoration
- Broadening
- Narrowing
- Metaphor
- Metonymy
- Synecdoche
Amelioration
- The result of the change is a more positive meaning
e.g. foolish – coy, shy – agreeable, delightful
Pejoration
- A change that gives a more negative meaning
e.g. awe-inspiring – terrible
Broadening
- Broadening is a type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word becomes
more broader or more inclusive than its earlier meaning. Also known as semantic
broadening, generalization, expansion, or extension.
e.g. bird – birddle (young bird) – any bird / companion – someone who eats bread with
you – any person that makes you company
Narrowing
- Semantic narrowing is a type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word
becomes less general or inclusive than its earlier meaning. Also known as
specialization or restriction.
e.g. girl – any young person – female young person / deer – any animal – specific animal
Metaphor
- The speaker perceive some sort of similarity between one concept (the source
concept S) and another concept (the target concept T) and press the word for S into
service to talk about T.
 e.g. The neck of a bottle. (similarity in form and position)/ He is a bookworm. (similarity
in behaviour)/ Head of a cabbage. (similarity of shape)
Metonym
- Involves some sort of connection between concepts, but in this case there is no
similarity between them, but they are closely linked in some other way, for example
because one is part of, or contains, the other.
e.g. I like to listen to Mozart. / Do you read Shakespeare?
Synecdoche
- A part is used to mean the whole.
e.g . We have several mouths to feed. (mouth instead of a whole person)

Sense Relations I
- Semantic relationships between the sense of expressions (Griffiths 2006: 13)
Patrick Griffiths: An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics
- The meaning relations that hold within the vocabulary of a language between words
themselves (Jackson 2014: 64)
Howard Jackson: Words and Their Meanings

Synonym: Sameness of meaning – two words are synonyms if they have the same meaning.
e.g. Table – a piece of furniture, chart,
Chart – Table (synonymy – one sense of relation)
English is rich in synonyms – vocabulary from two different sources (Anglo – Saxon, French,
Latin, Greek)
e.g. Brotherly, fraternal, buy, purchase
Point of debate: Are there true/absolute synonyms?
Examples:
Fall – Autumn (American/British English) – Dialectal differences
Pass away – die (Formality or Type of death) – Stylistic differneces
Politician – statesman (not every statesman is a politician) – Differences in emotional
meaning
Rancid – addled (užeglo – for butter/other food) – Collocational restrictions
Mature – adult, ripe (can't be used in same context) - Loose synonym
Testing synonymy
 - Substitution – substitute one word for another. True synonyms are interchangeable
in all their enviroments. Some words are interchagebale in certain enviroments only.
e.g. deep and profound – deep sympathy/profound sympathy, deep water/profound
water

- Investigation of Antonyms – investigate the opposites

e.g. superficial antonym of both deep and profound/shallow antonym of deep

Synonymy of words vs. Synonymy of senses

e.g. Pupil and Student
Are these two words synonyms? What are the senses of the word pupil?
- Person being instructed by the teacher
- Center of the eye
Pupil is synonymous with student with respect to the 1st sense of the word pupil.
The two words are not synonymous with respect to the 2nd sense of the word pupil.

- E.g. baggage and luggage

Are these two words synonyms with respect to all senses?

Antonyms

- Antonymy is the oppositeness of meaning; word that are opposite of antonyms.

- Many languages can create antonyms morphologically:
E.g. grateful – ungrateful/zahvalan – nezahvalan
- There are words that don't have obvious antonyms: e.g. library
- There are different kinds of oppositeness. The main distinction we have to make is
between gradeable and non-gradeable antonyms. For example:

Hot – Warm – Cold

High – Low

Gradeable

Wide – Narrow

Old – Young

- Since they are gradeable, there are often intermediate terms. They are open to
comparison.

Hot – Cold / Hot – Warm – Cold

- Usually one of the terms is UNMARKED and the other one is MARKED
 How high is it? How wide is it?
How low is it? How narrow is it?

Non – gradeable

Male – Female
Alive – Dead

- We have two – term sets not multiple – term sets.

- If someone is NOT alive, he/she is dead. If something is NOT narrow, it doesn't need
to be wide – it could be neither wide nor narrow.

Honest – Dishonest
Open – Shut
- They are gradeable in terms of more or less, but if we deny one, the other is
asserted:
Jane is more honest than Jill.
Jane isn't honest implies Jane is dishonest.
Brilliant – Stupid
- More or Less relationship cannot be applied to them: more brilliant does not equal
less stupid or more stupid, less brilliant
- They are not SYMETRICALLY REVERSIBLE
Relational opposition/conversness
Buy – Sell, Give – Receive
- If Bill sells to John, John buys from Bill.
Husband – Wife, Parent – Child
- If Jack is Maggie's husband, Maggie is Jack's wife.
Above – Below
- If the picture is above the table and the table is above the carpet, the picture is
above the carpet.
Kinship terms – many of them indicate not only the relationship, but the sex of the person
concerned:
Father – a male parent
Mother – a female parent
Son – a male child
John is Maggie's husband. John is Alex's father.
Alex could be a son as well as a daughter. Gender independent name.
So we have pairs indicating the same relationship but different sex:
- Father/mother, son/daughter, nephew/niece
 4. predavanje
Additional sense relations:
Polysemy
- A word is polsyemous/polysemic if it possesses several distinct senses – the
meanings of a polysemous expression are related to each other.
- E.g. rock is not a polysemous expression. No connection between noun and verb.
- The bank lowered its 2018. growth forecast for the Croatian economy. The flower
shop is next to the bank.
- Bank in this sense is connected.
- Polysemy is very common in language. It results from an economic tendency in
languages. Explain?
- One word conveys more senses; in order to denote a new concept or a new object,
existing terms are applied.
- Very often polysemy is systematic (institution x – building that houses x). A parallel
polysemy could be found and is quite regular in English.
- E.g. The University changed its admission policy last year. The university is on the
Main Street.
- E.g. Flight – How was your flight? Flight 123 to Paris is now boarding at Gate 7? A
bird in flight. A flight of swans. He dropped the phone during his flight from the
police. We live up two flights of stairs.
- The phenomenon of polysemy is independent of, but closely related to the
phenomenon of homonymy. It is not always easy to determine if a word is
polysemous or if we're talking about a homonym.
Homonymy
- A word written and/or pronounced the same way as another word, but with
different meanings – meanings that are not related. Similarly, we need to
differentiate homographs and homophones.
- e.g. Bark – tree bark or a dog bark
- e.g. I went to the bank of the river to enjoy some peace and quiet. I went to the bank
to deposit my savings.
- E.g. The liquid went down the drain. I bought a down parka.
- Over time polysemy may evolve into homonymy. Two uses of the same word
become more dissimilar and not obvious to ordinary speakers.
- E.g. bank (institution) – from Italian banco = money dealer's table
- Bank (river bank) – can be traced through Middle English, but has the same
Germanic origin as the Italian word.

Polysemy or homonymy?
- One word with different meanings or two different words with the same form?
Meronymy
- The relation of part to whole (Riemer, 2010: 140)
- X is a part of Y, a FINGER is a part of HAND
- E.g. Finger is a meronym of hand. Hand is a holonym of finger. Branch is a meronym
of tree. Tree is a holonym of branch.

Magnet(s)
Pickup(s)
Electric Coils
guitar
Fingerboar
Neck
d

Hyponym
- The relationship between two lexical items is that of „general – specific“, „is a type
of“
- A hierarchy of elements is present. X is a type of Y. A HORSE is a type of ANIMAL.
- E.g. Horse is a hyponym of animal. Animal is a hyperonym of horse.
- Table is a hyponym of furniture. Furniture is a hyperonym of table.

Food
Bread

Fruit
Whole
White
Wheat

Apples Mangoes

- A is a hyponym of B if every A is necessarily a B, but not every B is necessarily an A:

 - Strawberry (A) is a hyponym of fruit (B) because every strawberry is a fruit (B) but not
every fruit (B) is a strawberry (A); there is also kiwi fruit, orange, blueberry, etc.
- If A is a hyponym of B, and B of C, then A is a (more remote) hyponym of C:
- If Pink Lady (A) is a hyponym of apple (B), and apple (B) is a hyponym of fruit (C),
then Pink Lady (A) is a hyponym of fruit (C).
- Hyponym has a very important communicative function. In everyday communication
we often can't be very accurate and name precisely the referent we have in mind, so
we use its hyperonym:
- E.g. Ferrari – sports car
Taxonomy
- Very particular type of hyponymy
- A hyponimic hierarchy of names for plants and animals
- An important aspect of the way we talk about the natural world
 Semantika – 5. predavanje
Messi's fans are the loudest. (Lexical)
Xavi and Iniesta miss playing El Classico. (Lexical)
The ball is what both Rakitić and Arthur like. (Lexical)
Valverde told Dembele that he will be sitting on the bench during the match. (Structural)
Tall midfielders and strikers are arguing. (Structural)
Suarez kicked a man with a ball. (Structural)
We need more skilful players. (Structural)
Messi smiled and took a bow. (Lexical)
Teasing Suarez can be dangerous. (Structural)
The parents of Arthur and Rafinha were watching the game. (Structural)
Rakitić works out in the backyard. (Structural)
Messi seems to be breaking records every other week. (Lexical)
Coutinho decided on the boat. (Structural)
Busquets saw a bat. (Lexical)
Roberto's glasses have broken. (Lexical)
 Sentence, utterance, proposition
Sentence
- A linguistic construct
- A string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language (Hurford
2007:17)
- A sentence is a grammatical unit, that is, it is a string of words of a particular type,
whose well-formedness conditions are specified in the grammar of the language
(Cruse 2000:22)
- In order to be grammatical a sentence must contain at least one independent clause,
and a clause must contain at least one predication (an argument – predicate
structure) (Cruse 2000:22)
- E.g. Sentence: I would like an espresso. Not a sentence: Espresso, please.
Utterance:
- Any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part
of that person (Hurford 2007: 16)
- Each utterance is unique, produced by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion.
- An utterance could be any piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a
single phrases, or even a single word
- There is disagreement between some linguists as to whether or not a written piece
of language is to be considered an utterance
- E.g. John likes hamburgers.
- Is this a sentence and why? Is this an utterance? Every time this sentence is spoken,
it becomes an utterance.
- How many utterances of this sentence are possible? An indefinite number. Many
utterances of the same sentence.
- E.g. In P5. Not a sentence. Is this an utterance? Yes. How do we interpret the
meaning of an utterance? Context. Perhaps answer to Where is my exam going to
take place?
- The exam is going to take place in P5 (Said by Ana and Ivo ) – One sentence, two
utterances (said by two persons).
Sentence vs. Utterance
- Sentence – Abstract units not tied to context. Semantics – study of word meaning
and sentence meaning.
- Utterance – Identified by their contexts. Pragmatics – study of utterance meaning.
- Sentence cannot be loud or quiet. Utterance can. Can a sentence be in a particular
regional accent? No, an utterance can.
- Can a sentence be long? Yes, so can an utterance.
Proposition
- A logical construct, not a linguistic construct
- A simple proposition attributes some property to an entity, or a relation between
two or more entities (Cruse 2000:25)
- Propositions are either true or false, but not both.
- The Earth is round. True. Split is the capital of Croatia. False.
- A proposition is divided in a predicate and its arguments.
- Argument: designates some entity or group of entities.
- Predicate: attributes some property to the entity denoted.
- E.g. Jack (A) loves (P) Jill (A).
- E.g. Jack (A) bought (P) Jill (A) a rose (A).
- Argument + predicate = proposition.
- The same proposition can be expressed by an infinite number of sentences.
- Peter went out with June. Peter went out with Paul's sister. Peter went out with
Annie's aunt.
- These sentences express the same proposition if June is Paul's sister and if Paul has
a daughter named Annie.
- It is possible to have one sentence with multiple propositions.
- I need you to understand that your reaction to his comment this morning was not
acceptable.
- Depending on the values of deictic expressions, I, you, his, this morning.
How do we establish if two sentences express different propositions?
- The notion of truth. If one sentence is true, the other one is false, we can say that
they express different propositions:
- Peter went out with June. Peter didn't go out with June.
Do the following sentence pairs have the same propositional content?
- Go home, will you? You will go home. Same proposition.
- Elephants might fly. I am a Croatian. Different proposition.
- I am a thief. Am I a thief? Same proposition.

- A proposition may have only one predicate, but more than one argument.
- Arguments are typically noun phrases.
- Predicates are typically verbs, prepositions, and (predicate) adjectives.
- Predicates differ in respect to valency, the number of arguments that co-occur with a
predicate. 0-, 1-,2-,3- and 4-place predicate.
Predicates
- O- zero place predicates (weather expressions in which the subject is a dummy it)
- It is cold. It is sunny.
- 1- place predicates (intransitive verbs, intransitive phrasal verbs, and some copula +
subject complements)
- The car is burning. The bird flew away. She is Croatian.
- 2-place predicates (transitive verbs, transitive phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs,
adjectival structures with be)
- Jane wrote a paper. Jane wrote the address down. The house belongs to her brother.
Peter is similar to Paul.
- 3-place predicates (ditransitive verbs, complex transitive verbs, diprepositional
verbs)
- Paul gave the car to Peter. They donated the furniture to charity. The wall extends
from coast to coast.
- 4-place predicates:
- We flew from Zagreb to Calgary via Washington.
 6. predavanje
Friday 30th Midterm
Formal Semantics or Truth – Conditional Semantics
- Lexical semantics – Focuses on the meaning of words
- Truth – Conditional Semantics – Focuses on the meaning of sentences: under the
influence of formal logic and philosophy. The meaning of words and phrases is
different from sentence meaning. The core meaning of any sentence (any statement)
is its truth conditions
- Truth conditions - the conditions which must hold for the sentence to be used to
make a true statement
- „to know the meaning of a sentence is to know what the world would have to be like
for the sentence to be true“
- A sentence can be judged TRUE or FALSE (i.e. assigned a TRUTH VALUE)
- What is the truth value of the following sentences? Parakeets are animals. It's
snowing outside.
- Easy to establish the truth value of A (just by looking at the words on the page). In
the case of B, you cannot tell in advance – you have to look out of the window. But
you know it's TRUTH CONDITIONS – what the world must be like for it to be true.
- The weather is gorgeous (T). The weather isn't gorgeous (F).
- A. Your hair is not wavy. Adding NOT to the sentence reverses its truth value.
- B. Your hair is NOT wavy. If A is true then B is false; also if A is false then B is true.
- A. p p neg. P
- B. neg p. T F
- F T
- A. Sam loves Jackie. B. Jackie is loved by Sam. Same propositional content.
- Two sentences with identical propositional content will yield statements with the
same truth values on all occasions of use: John kissed Mary. Mary was kissed by
John.
- Propositional content is not the only aspect of sentence meaning: John has arrived.
John has already arrived.
- Sam loves Jackie. Sam still loves Jackie. Propositional content is the same, meaning is
different.
- What is the relation between the following sentences? My brother is a bachelor. My
brother has never married. These sentences are synonymous (PARAPHRASES)
- A. My brother has just come from Rome. B. My brother Sebastian has never been to
Rome. A contradicts B.
- A. The anarchist assassinated the emperor. B. The emperor is dead. A. entails B.
- We can say that proposition p entails proposition q just in case the following three
things are true:
 - a) whenever p is true, it is logically necessary that q must also be true;
- b) whenever q is false, it is logically necessary that p must also be false;
- c) these relations follow directly from the meanings of p and q, and do not depend
on the context of the utterance
- A. I regret eating your sandwich
- B. I ate your sandwich
- A. I don't regret eating your sandwich
- B. I ate your sandwich
- A. The Mayor of Manchester is a woman
- B. There is a Mayor of Manchester
- C. I regret eating your sandwich
- D. I ate your sandwich
- A presupposes B. C presupposes D.

- A. Croatia is Croatia. Ireland is Ireland.

- B. Rich people are rich.
- A and B are necessarily TRUE – TAUTOLOGIES
- A. ? He is a murderer but he's never killed anyone.
- B. ? Now is not now.
- A and B are necessarily FALSE – CONTRADICTIONS.

- PRESUPPOSITION – something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making

an utterance. Speakers have presuppositions. What is presupposed is background
information.
- ENTAILMENT – something that logically follows from what is asserted in the
utterance. Sentences have entailments. It is a logical concept.

- A. Her husband is a fool. B. She has a husband.

- A. I don't regret leaving London. B. I left London.

Presupposition and Entailment

Entailment:
I saw my father today. I saw someone today. A entails B.
I didn't see my father today. I saw someone today. A doesn't entail B.
Presupposition:
A. The mayor of Liverpool is in town. There is a mayor of Liverpool. A presupposes B.
B. The mayor of Liverpool isn't in town today. There is a mayor of Liverpool. A
presupposes B.
 Predavanje 7.
Literal and non – literal meaning
Literal
- I. Primary meaning
- 2. Context – free meaning
- 3. Conventional meaning
- 4. Semantics – deals with literal meaning.

Non - literal
- 1. The secondary meaning – derived from some more basic meaning
- 2. context – dependent meaning
- 3. Goes beyond the conventional meaning
- 4. Pragmatics – deals with non – literal meaning
Non – literal (figurative) meaning
- How do we interpret non – literal (figurative) meaning?
- Three stage model: Derive literal meaning, test literal meaning against context, if it
makes no sense in context, find alternative, metaphorical meaning.
Figurative langugage
- 1. She thinks she broke a glass ceiling with her achievement
- 2. JP Morgan warns of a ticking debt time-bomb which could explode in 2019.
- 3. Desperate to throw a lifeline to the coal sector, the administration has considered
directly subsidizing coal in the name of national security.
Metaphor
- He snores like a pig. SIMILE
- She boiled with anger. METAPHOR
- Metaphor is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared with another by
saying that one is the other. (Kovecses, 2010.)
- She was a lioness, he was her prey.
- What is metaphor used for? Who uses metaphors? Do you need a special talent in
order to create and use a metaphor?
Cognitive linguistics view of metaphor
- According to Lakoff and Johnson, metaphor is not only a poetic device, but an
essential component of human cognition – metaphor is an integral part of human
categorization: a basic way of organizing our thoughts about the world.
 - Not purely linguistic but conceptual in nature.
- It is a way of expressing through language, but also a way of thinking about the
world.
- Metaphor is pervasive in language and in everyday life.
- e.g. I could feel the electricity between us. There were sparks. They are attracted by
each other. They gravitated to each other immediately.
- In all of these, love is conteptualized as a physical force.
Conceptual metaphor theory:
- Metaphor invovles making a comparison or drawing a resemblance – mapping
between two different domains:
- 1. Source domain – usually concrete and familiar; experienced, the concept that you
draw upon in order to create a metaphorical construct.
- 2. Target domain – usually abstract; less well – known; the topic that you want to
describe through metaphor.
- ARGUMENT is WAR -We talk and think about arguments in terms of war.
- e.g. Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His
critics were right on target. I demolished my his arguments. I've never won an
argument with him. He shot down all my arguments.
- What are the two domains in the metaphor ARGUMENT is WAR?
- Argument (target) is war (source).
- We talk about arguments in terms of war and we also live by that metaphor in our
culture – the person that we are arguing with is our opponent, we attack his position
and defend our own.
- A metaphorical concept structures what we do and how we understand what we are
doing.
- „ We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that way.“
(Lakoff, 1980.)

Happy – up, Sad – down.

I'm feeling up. I'm feeling down. He's really low these days. He's in high spirits.
Conscious is up, unconscious is down. Health and life are up; Sickness and death are down.
Good is up, bad is down.
- Not only is the human language metaphorical, but our thought processes are also
metaphorical in nature. Metaphor constructs our mental life.
- SPATIAL METAPHORS above.
Love is a journey. – set of correspondences, or mappings:
- We're at a crossroads. We've gotten of the track. We'll just have to go our separate
ways.
 - Source: Journey Target: Love
The travelers The lovers
The vehicle The love relationship itself
The journey Events in the relationship
The distance covered The progress made
The obstacles encountered Difficulties experienced
Decisions about the direction Choices about what to do
Time is money. – English and Croatian match and have the same metaphor.
You're running out of time. I don't have the time to give you.

I'll take my chances.

I've got an ace up my sleeve.
The odds are against me.
He's holding all the aces.
It's a toss – up?
The theory needs more support.
His argument will fall apart.
The argument collapsed.
We will show that theory to be without foundation.
So far we have put only the framework of the theory.
 8. predavanje
Seminar
There are some words we've decided we can't use. Nobody gives you a list – they are
prohibited by certain authorities. The „list“ of those words always changes from person to
person. There are words that are only sometimes considered dirty, for example, ass.
Another word like that is bitch. They are strongly dependant on context, the meaning of
some swear words are ambiguous.
Fuck - Faggot - Shit - Cock – Damn
Predavanje
Extension of meaning II
Semantic change / Semantic shift
- Refers to any change in the meaning of the word over the course of time
- How and when does the change happen?
- Semantic change usually happens gradually, in phases, but it happens relatively
quickly compared to changes that occur in other areas of language.
- Words change their meaning all the time: any word can change its meaning. Usually
content words change their meaning.
- According to Riemer (2010) the conjunction and used to be polysemous and meant
if.
- HISTORICAL SEMANTICS – the study of the change of meanings of expressions
through time.
- Considering the standard word LITERALLY = Actually (Oxford Dictionary)
- Words are typically polysemous, they each have various meanings. They can lose or
gain meanings relatively easily, they do not have to losea n earlier sense to gain a
new one.
- CAUSES OF CHANGE: linguistic or extralinguistic
- Semantic change happens for different reasons and in different ways, but such
change is usually not arbitrary: there is always some connection between the two
meanings.
- They're usually related by ways of association because of their similarity or
contiguity.

Cruse (2000)
- Word W has established a literals sense. S1.
- Some creative pperson uses W in a new figurative sense. S2.
 - S2. „catches on“, and becomes established (i.e. laid down as an entry in the mental
lexicons of members of the speech community) so that W becomes polysemous
between S1 and S2. S1 is still perceived as literal, and S2 as figurative. S1 begins to
become obsolescent. S2 begins to be perceived as literal, and S1 as figurative. S1 is
lost, at which popint the meaning of W has changed from S1 to S2.

Cruse (2000)
- E.g. expire – what does it mean? It initially meant to die, but took on a new
figurative meaning, a new figurative sense was added = „come to the end of a period
of validity“
- Figurative and literal sense coexist. Nowadays, the sense „die“ is uncommon.

Changes in denotative meaning:

- NARROWING or SPECIALIZATION
- BROADENING or GENERALIZATION

Changes in the connotative meaning:

- AMELIORATION
- PEJORATION
Narrowing:
- A word narrows its range of reference: a meaning becomes more specific, a word is
used in fewer contexts.
- E.g. deer – Old and Middle English deer – all animals
- E.g. meat – Middle English meat – food
- E.g. girl – Middle English girl – child or young person of either sex. Modern English
girl – female child, young woman.
Generalization:
- A word's meaning encompasses a wider class of referents; a meaning becomes more
general, a word cna be used in more contexts.
- E.g. dog – from dogge in OE – a specific breed of dog today – dogs in general
- E.g. bird from bridde – referred only to young birds, today refers to all birds
Amelioration:
- A word's connotation changed over time, it acquired more positive connotation.
- A shift of meaning from neutral or negative fo positive.
- E.g. nice in Middle English – foolish, simple, ignorant – Minister = a servant
Pejoration:
- A word acquires more negative connotation: it takes on a derogative meaning.
- A shift of meaning from neutral or positive to negative.
 - E.g. silly in OE – happy, blissful, blessed, fortunate. Villain – Serf (an agricultural
labourer bound by the feudal system who was tied to working on his lord's estate )
How about these words?
- Awesome, aggravate, anxious, gay