The next thing I studied was the meaning of language. Yes, after all this talk about structure, I’m finally going to talk about what anything actually means.
Semantics
Word meanings start with the field of semantics. Semantics concerns the literal meaning of language elements, without taking context into account. There are two types of semantics: lexical semantics and phrasal semantics. Lexical semantics deals with the meanings of individual words, while phrasal semantics deals with the meaning of phrases and sentences.
Lexical Semantics
Lexical semantics is not about defining words like in a dictionary. Rather than trying to give set definitions to words, it explores what properties speakers of a language ascribe to their words. Unlike people who write dictionaries, linguists working in lexical semantics pay little attention to what definitions are right or wrong.
Linguists’ definitions of words also look different from dictionary definitions. A Google search for the definition of cat yields: “a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws.” For the purpose of semantics, though, a linguist would more likely list its semantic properties, such as “animal,” “feline,” “small,” “furry.” These are often represented using plus or minus symbols.
Meanings are represented like this because they’re more accurate to how humans think about words. When people think cat, they don’t literally think “a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws.” This is because our brains don’t categorize words in this way. The brain connects words to certain concepts and other words related to it. A list of linguistic properties better represents the associations the brain makes when it comes to words, and the elements of knowledge it combines to form an understanding of what the word represents.
Dictionary definitions also often focus on physical and factual properties. But these types of properties are different from linguistic properties. A scientific dictionary might well define water as “a chemical compound made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom,” but this is far from the forefront of one’s mind when they think water. Most people would probably think things like “liquid,” “cool,” “drinkable.” “Liquid” isn’t even necessarily true of water in a physical sense, but that’s how our brains form the picture of water. Because of this, I’m still unsure of how to discern a word’s semantic properties. Some of the ones I’ve listed may be inaccurate due to me confusing linguistic properties with other kinds of properties.
Semantic properties influence which words we use in a sentence. Take sentences like this:
I have two pencils
I have lots of rice
*I have lots of pencil
*I have two rices
The last two sentences seem odd. What makes them that way is semantic, not syntactic or grammatical. Words that represent a sort of substance, a fluid mass, are called mass nouns. Words representing individual things are called count nouns. Individual numbers can’t usually be used with mass nouns, while with count nouns they can. This is just one example of how semantic properties affect grammar.
What I next learned about the words ending with -nym. Most people know about synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. But a more technical definition of antonyms is “two words who share all but one semantic property.” Both small and big have [+size], but big has [+large] and small has [-large]. There are also gradable pairs of antonyms. A small elephant is bigger than a big mouse. The adjective has different degrees based on the noun it describes. Gradable pairs also often have a marked and unmarked member. The unmarked member is what we usually use to ask a question, like “how long is it?” not “how short is it?”. “Long” is the sort of “default.” Something short is just “not long.”
There are also some antonyms called relational opposites, like teacher and student or buy and sell. If A is B's teacher, B is A's student. If A sold something to B, B bought something from A.
Words that have multiple meanings are polysemous. Heteronyms are words that are spelled the same, but have different pronunciations and meanings, like bass the fish and bass the musical section. There are also hyponyms, which are words that share one or more semantic properties. And there are metonyms, which are words that substitute a word for something associated with it in order to describe it. An example is saying Washington to mean “the U.S. government.”
Linguists’ definitions of words also look different from dictionary definitions. A Google search for the definition of cat yields: “a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws.” For the purpose of semantics, though, a linguist would more likely list its semantic properties, such as “animal,” “feline,” “small,” “furry.” These are often represented using plus or minus symbols.
Meanings are represented like this because they’re more accurate to how humans think about words. When people think cat, they don’t literally think “a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws.” This is because our brains don’t categorize words in this way. The brain connects words to certain concepts and other words related to it. A list of linguistic properties better represents the associations the brain makes when it comes to words, and the elements of knowledge it combines to form an understanding of what the word represents.
Dictionary definitions also often focus on physical and factual properties. But these types of properties are different from linguistic properties. A scientific dictionary might well define water as “a chemical compound made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom,” but this is far from the forefront of one’s mind when they think water. Most people would probably think things like “liquid,” “cool,” “drinkable.” “Liquid” isn’t even necessarily true of water in a physical sense, but that’s how our brains form the picture of water. Because of this, I’m still unsure of how to discern a word’s semantic properties. Some of the ones I’ve listed may be inaccurate due to me confusing linguistic properties with other kinds of properties.
Semantic properties influence which words we use in a sentence. Take sentences like this:
I have two pencils
I have lots of rice
*I have lots of pencil
*I have two rices
The last two sentences seem odd. What makes them that way is semantic, not syntactic or grammatical. Words that represent a sort of substance, a fluid mass, are called mass nouns. Words representing individual things are called count nouns. Individual numbers can’t usually be used with mass nouns, while with count nouns they can. This is just one example of how semantic properties affect grammar.
What I next learned about the words ending with -nym. Most people know about synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. But a more technical definition of antonyms is “two words who share all but one semantic property.” Both small and big have [+size], but big has [+large] and small has [-large]. There are also gradable pairs of antonyms. A small elephant is bigger than a big mouse. The adjective has different degrees based on the noun it describes. Gradable pairs also often have a marked and unmarked member. The unmarked member is what we usually use to ask a question, like “how long is it?” not “how short is it?”. “Long” is the sort of “default.” Something short is just “not long.”
There are also some antonyms called relational opposites, like teacher and student or buy and sell. If A is B's teacher, B is A's student. If A sold something to B, B bought something from A.
Words that have multiple meanings are polysemous. Heteronyms are words that are spelled the same, but have different pronunciations and meanings, like bass the fish and bass the musical section. There are also hyponyms, which are words that share one or more semantic properties. And there are metonyms, which are words that substitute a word for something associated with it in order to describe it. An example is saying Washington to mean “the U.S. government.”
Phrasal Semantics
The most fundamental concept in phrasal semantics is the Principle of Compositionality: sentence meaning is the meaning of the words in the sentence combined with the sentence’s structure.
First, we start with the relationship between nouns and adjectives. The good book is a Noun Phrase, so book is it’s head. The adjective, good, modifies the head, but the head does not modify the adjective. The property of good is added to the book, but the property of “bookness” is not added to good. It means the same thing it always has.
In some cases, an adjective can modify a noun to such an extent that it cancels all of its properties. A false friend is not a friend at all. They aren’t friendly.
Meaning also tends to center on the heads of phrases. A green sea is a sea that is green, but sea green is a shade of green that is like the sea.
Sentences also have a referent. In Arthur is building his Pilot Website, “Pilot Website” is the referent because the sentence “points to” it. I know this is vague and kind of arbitrary, but again, one usually knows instinctively what a sentence refers to. Two phrases are coreferential if they refer to the same thing, like Arthur’s Pilot Website and The website Arthur is currently building. The phrases give slightly different information, though, so rather than saying they have the same meaning, we say they have the same sense. Reference and sense are also flexible. The website Arthur is building, at the time I’m writing this, has Arthur’s Pilot Website as its referent, but later I could be building a different website.
Next, I’ll talk about verbs. The verb is central to the meaning of sentences. Just look at the terms you’re probably already familiar with. The subject performs of the verb, the object experiences the verb, and so on. The verb determines how many objects can be in a sentence and the semantic properties of its words. Make requires an animate, active subject and can take a direct object. Sleep takes no objects, and so there can be none in the particular phrase. The verb guards a sentence and judges which types of words are permitted into it.
First, we start with the relationship between nouns and adjectives. The good book is a Noun Phrase, so book is it’s head. The adjective, good, modifies the head, but the head does not modify the adjective. The property of good is added to the book, but the property of “bookness” is not added to good. It means the same thing it always has.
In some cases, an adjective can modify a noun to such an extent that it cancels all of its properties. A false friend is not a friend at all. They aren’t friendly.
Meaning also tends to center on the heads of phrases. A green sea is a sea that is green, but sea green is a shade of green that is like the sea.
Sentences also have a referent. In Arthur is building his Pilot Website, “Pilot Website” is the referent because the sentence “points to” it. I know this is vague and kind of arbitrary, but again, one usually knows instinctively what a sentence refers to. Two phrases are coreferential if they refer to the same thing, like Arthur’s Pilot Website and The website Arthur is currently building. The phrases give slightly different information, though, so rather than saying they have the same meaning, we say they have the same sense. Reference and sense are also flexible. The website Arthur is building, at the time I’m writing this, has Arthur’s Pilot Website as its referent, but later I could be building a different website.
Next, I’ll talk about verbs. The verb is central to the meaning of sentences. Just look at the terms you’re probably already familiar with. The subject performs of the verb, the object experiences the verb, and so on. The verb determines how many objects can be in a sentence and the semantic properties of its words. Make requires an animate, active subject and can take a direct object. Sleep takes no objects, and so there can be none in the particular phrase. The verb guards a sentence and judges which types of words are permitted into it.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the meaning of language when social context is taken into account. It deals with things like how You’re standing in front of the T.V. is not an idle observation. It means “get out of the way of the T.V.” I didn’t read very much about this, but here’s some things it deals with:
Discourse
The sentence They’re on the table has no definite semantic meaning. But in the context of a conversation, like:
Person 1: Where are the keys?
Person 2: They’re on the table.
It makes sense. That’s how pragmatics informs discourse. Sentences that have no meaning on their own gain meaning in the context of a conversation. In this case, a pronoun that refers to nothing when the sentence it’s in is isolated now refers to the keys. We know this not from the sentence They’re on the table, but the context surrounding it. There’s probably much more about this topic, but I didn’t get that far.
Maxims of Conversation
There are four maxims that must be followed when making conversation:
Deixis
Deixis (dike-sis) is the observation that much of language only has meaning in a certain time or place. It’s an extension of what I discussed in the “Discourse” section above. A pronoun like they means nothing without context, so it is called a deictic expression. This also applies to locations like here and there. If I write “I am here,” the reader has no idea where “here” is, because as far as she knows, I could be anywhere. At home, at school, etc. That’s what deixis is. A lot has been written about it, but there was only a brief description in this textbook.
Discourse
The sentence They’re on the table has no definite semantic meaning. But in the context of a conversation, like:
Person 1: Where are the keys?
Person 2: They’re on the table.
It makes sense. That’s how pragmatics informs discourse. Sentences that have no meaning on their own gain meaning in the context of a conversation. In this case, a pronoun that refers to nothing when the sentence it’s in is isolated now refers to the keys. We know this not from the sentence They’re on the table, but the context surrounding it. There’s probably much more about this topic, but I didn’t get that far.
Maxims of Conversation
There are four maxims that must be followed when making conversation:
- Maxim of Quantity: Say only as much or as little as needed
- Maxim of Relevance: Be relevant
- Maxim of Manner: Be clear and concise; don’t confuse people
- Maxim of Quality: Do not lie
Deixis
Deixis (dike-sis) is the observation that much of language only has meaning in a certain time or place. It’s an extension of what I discussed in the “Discourse” section above. A pronoun like they means nothing without context, so it is called a deictic expression. This also applies to locations like here and there. If I write “I am here,” the reader has no idea where “here” is, because as far as she knows, I could be anywhere. At home, at school, etc. That’s what deixis is. A lot has been written about it, but there was only a brief description in this textbook.