DEFINITION

• The word “semantics” derives from Greek “semainein” means

“to signify”. Others say “semantikos”, gives signs from the word
“sema” means “sign”
• the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases,
and sentences is called semantics without context or non-
linguistic.
SUBFIELDS OF SEMANTICS
• subfields of semantics are lexical semantics, which is
concerned with the meaning of words, the meanings of
relationships among words.
• phrasal or sentential semantics, which is concerned with
the meanings of syntactic units larger than the words.
 T H E R E L AT I O N B E T W E E N F O R M
AND MEANING
• The relation between the form(phonetic
shape) and meaning is arbitrary
• Onomatopoetic words are are intended to
be imitation of sounds which they refer
e.g. ding-dong, buzz etc.
• The relation between the form of a
sentence and its meaning is generally not
arbitrary but compositional e.g. yellow
submarine.

•
THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE
• Knowing the object that words refer to (the prime minster of france or even
the present king of France)
• Knowing when sentences are true or false. (All kings are male, it is called
tautology, all bachelors are married, it is called paradox ).
• Knowing non-linguistic knowledge ( molybdenum conducts electricity).
• Knowing that another sentence must be true ( nina bathed her dogs. -------
Nina’s dogs must be wet. It is called entailment).
• Knowing the contradictory sentences (jack is alive, and jack is dead)
Study the following statements
• Defenseless fuzzy bunnies run quickly .
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• I asked whether she likes him

• I asked that she likes him.
• I know whether she likes him.
• I know that she likes him.
• I know whether she likes him.
• I know that she likes him.
• The crash killed the driver.

• The crash murdered the driver.

COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS
• Semantic rules of grammar must account for the semantic knowledge
like truth, reference, entailment, ambiguity etc.
• Our grammar contains general semantic rules that combine the
meanings of words into meaningful phrases and sentences.
T H E B O Y S AW T H E M A N W I T H A T E L E S C O P E

NP VP

Det N VP PP

The boy V NP P NP

saw Det N with Det N

det
the man a telescope
 SEMANTIC RULES
SEMANTIC RULES
our semantic rules must be sensitive to the meaning of individual words and the structure in
which they occur
example: jack swims
word meanings:
jack refers to (or means) the individual jack
swims refers to (or means) the set of individual that swim
SEMANTIC RULE I

NP VP

JACK SWIMS

if the meaning of np (an individual) is a member of the meaning of vp

(a set of individuals), then s is true otherwise it is false
SEMANTIC RULE II
Example : Jack called Laura
Word meaning:
Jack refers to (or VP means) the individual Jack
Laura refers to (or means) the individual Laura
Called refers to (or means) the set of pairs of individual X and Y such that X called Y.
S
NP VP
Jack V NP
called Laura

The meaning of [ VP V NP] is the set of individuals X such that X is the first member of any
pair in the meaning of V whose second member is the meaning of NP.
another example:

Jack swims beautifully.

• The word “beautifully” is not an individual or a set of individuals.
• It is an operation that reduces the size of the sets that are in the meanings of
the verb phrases.
• When applied to the meaning to the meaning of “swim” , it reduces the set of
individuals who swim to the smaller set of those who swim beautifully.
 T H E AW R Y C O M P O S I T I O N A L I T Y
• There are interesting cases in which compositionality breaks down because
there is a problem with words or semantic rules.
• If one or more words in a sentence do not have a meaning, then obviously we
will not be able to compute a meaning for entire sentence.
• If the individual words have meanings but can not be combined together as
the syntactic structure and related semantic rule require, we will also not get
a meaning.
ANOMALY
Individual words have meanings but can not be combined together as the
syntactic structure.
• Don’t tell me of a man’s being able to talk to sense; everyone can talk sense.
Can he talk nonsense?
• There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of
nonsense as want of sense.
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Dark green leaves rustle furiously.
METAPHOR
• Metaphors may have a literal meaning as well as their metaphorical meaning,
so in some sense they are ambiguous.
• To interpret metaphors we need to understand at least the meaning of the
words that comprise it, if not the literal meaning of whole, and significantly,
facts about the world.
• Time is money, the fall of the dollars,
IDIOMS

• Knowing fixed phrases, consisting of more than one word, with

meanings that can not be inferred from the meanings of individual words.
• Examples.
o get it off
o eat my hat
o let their hair down
o bite your tongue
o give a piece of your mind
LEXICAL SEMANTICS (WORD MEANINGS)

“There is a glory for you”

“ I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’ . “Alice said”
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.
• The meaning of most words and all morphemes is conventional
• The meanings of most sentences must be constructed by the
application of semantic rules
THEORIES OF WORD MEANING
The meanings of words has been debated by philosophers and
linguists.
The meaning of a word is not like a dictionary entry.

It is natural …. To think of there being connected with a sign…

besides .. The reference of a sign, also what I should like to call the
sense of the sign.. (Gottlob Frege)
THE THEORY OF REFERENCE
It is the thing or thing in the real world
that it refers to.

The meaning of proper name like “Jack” is

the individual referred to, or its reference.
N P c a n b e s u b s t i t u t e d b y o t h e r N P.
 T H E T H E O RY O F M E N TA L I S M
• Not every NP refers to an individual, e.g. No baby swims.
• The speakers know many words that have no real-world referents, e.g.
hobbits, unicorns, Harry Potter etc.
• E.g. George W Bush and the president.. (the head of a state)
• So, the meaning of a world is the mental image it conjures up in the
mind of speakers.
THE THEORY OF
CONTEXTUALISM
• The meaning of words is bound to cultural context and ecology to the
language use. Words will be meaningless if taken out from cultural
context.
 L E X I C A L R E L AT I O N S
Words are semantically related to one another in a variety of ways.
 Synonyms  are words or expressions that have the same meaning
in some or all contexts.
 E.g. apathetic/ phlegmatic/passive/sluggish/indifferent
pedigree/ancestry/genealogy/descent/lineage
• Synonymous pairs consisting of a word with a Germanic root and
another with a Latin root such as:
Manly virile
heal recuperate
send transmit
go down descend
 Antonyms are words that are opposite in meaning.
 Complementary pairs:
alive dead
present absent
awakeasleep
 Gradable pairs:
big small
hot cold
fast slow
happy sad
 Another characteristic of gradable antonyms, marked and unmarked.
The unmarked member is the one used in question of degree.
E.g. How high is the mountain? (not how low is it?). ‘High’ is the
unmarked member of high/low.
 Another kind of opposite involves pairs, called relational opposites like:
give receive
buy sell
teacher pupil
 Pairs of words ending -er -ee are usually relational opposites.
 Some words are their own antonyms, called “auto antonyms.
E.g. cleave (to split apart) or (to cling together); dust (to remove something) or (to spread
something).
 In English there are several ways to form antonyms.
By adding prefix un, e.g.
likely unlikely
ableunable
fortunate unfortunate
By adding non-, e.g.
entity nonentity
conformist nonconformist
How about: flammable/ inflammable; valuable/invaluable
H O M O N Y M S , P O LY S E M Y A N D H Y P O N Y M S
 Homonyms also called homophones are words that have different meanings but
are pronounced the same and may or may not be spelled the same. To, too and
two are homonyms despite their spelling different.
bear bare
flour flower
bank bank
said sad
 Polysemy is a word that has multiple meanings related conceptually or historically., e.g. diamond referring to a
geometric shape and also to a baseball field that has that shape.
e.g. guard
finger
overture

 Hyponyms are sets of words that have relation between general term and specific term.
e.g. red, white, yellow are color words.
lion, tiger, leopard and lynx are all felines.
beagle, poodle are included as dog
DEIXES
• Besides meanings, words also have a pointing function.
• Deixes derives from Greek means to point, to show.
• For example, the woman bought a clock; this tablet, that
person always bothered me, I walked a mile yesterday.
(deixes referential and temporal).
METONYMS
• A metonym is a word that substitutes for an object the name of an attribute
or concept associated with that object.
• The use of crown for king, or for the government ruled by a king.
• The use of brass to refer to a military leader.
• Sportswriters usually employed gridiron to refer to football; diamond for
baseball; ice for hockey; turf for horseracing and so on.
S E M A N T I C F E AT U R E S
• Red /white has semantic feature about color
• Big/small has semantic feature about size
• Buy/sell has semantic feature like change in location or possession ,
differing only in the direction of change.
Semantic features are thought to be conceptual elements by which a person
understands the meanings of words and sentences.
S E M A N T I C F E AT U R E S A N D G R A M M A R
• Further evidence that words are composed of smaller bits of meaning is that
semantic features interact with different aspects of grammar, such as
morphology or syntax particularly in both nouns and verbs.
semantic features of noun
• The same semantic feature may be shared by many words. “female” is a semantic feature, sometimes
indicated by the bound suffix –ess, that makes up part of the meaning of nouns such as:
tigress hen auntmaiden
doe mare debutante widow
ewe vixen girl woman
The words in the last two columns are also distinguished by the semantic feature “human” which is also
found in:
doctor dean professor teenager
bachelor parent baby child
Semantic properties may have syntactic effects. For example, the kinds of
determiners that a noun may occur with are controlled by whether it is a
“count” or a “mass” noun.
Consider these data:
I have two dogs. * I have two rice (s)
I have a dog. * I have a rice.
* I have dog. I have rice.
He has many dogs. * He has many rice (s).
* He has much dogs. He has much rice.
Semantic features of verbs
• Verbs can also be broken down into semantic features. For example, “cause” is a
feature of verbs such as darken, kill, uglify and so on.
darken cause to become dark
kill cause to die
uglify cause to become ugly
 “Go” is a feature of verbs that mean a change in location or possession, such as
swim, crawl, throw, fly, give or buy.
Jack swims. The baby threw the ball over the fence.
The baby crawled under the table. John gave Mary a beautiful ring.
 Eventives, verbs describe events. Eventive sentences sound natural when
passivized, when expressed progressively, when used imperatively, and with
certain adverbs.
Mary was kissed by John. Oysters were eaten by John.
John is kissing Mary. John is eating oysters.
Kiss Mary! Eat oysters!
John deliberately kiss Mary. John deliberately ate oysters.
 Statives, verbs describe states.
Mary is known by John. Oysters are liked by John.
John is knowing Mary. John is liking oysters.
Know Mary! Like oysters!
John deliberately knows Mary. John deliberately like oysters.
ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
• Verbs differ in terms of number and types of NPs they can take as
complement.
• Transitive verbs such as find, hit, chase and so on take and select a direct
object complement.
• Whereas intransitive verbs like dance or sleep do not take complement at
all.
• Ditransitive verbs have three arguments : the subject, direct object and
indirect object.
• The argument structure of a verb is part of its meaning and is included in its
lexical entry.
• John threw/tossed/kicked/flung the boy the ball.
• * John pushed/pulled/lifted/hauled the boy the ball.
• Mary faxed/radioed/emailed/phoned Helen the news.
• * Mary murmured / mumbled/ muttered /shrieked Helen the news.

Verbs in (1) involve a single quick motion, whereas those in (2) involve an
extended use of force. Similarly, the verbs in (3) and (4) are all verb of
communication but their meaning differ in the means by which the message is
communicated.
T H E M AT I C R O L E S
• The NP subject of a sentence and the arguments in the VP are semantically related
in various ways to the verb. The relations depend on the meaning of the particular
verb. The relations such as agent and theme and others are called thematic roles.
The boy rolled a red ball (agent / theme)
John sold the book to Mary . (agent/theme/goal)
Mary bought the book from John. (agent/theme/source)
(Doer; undergoer; goal – endpoint of location and possession; source – where action
originates; experiencer – one receives sensory input; instrument – the means used)