CAS LX 502 Semantics

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CAS LX 502Semantics

• 3a. Word meaning
• 3.1-3.6ish

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Lexical semantics

• As a first approximation The meaning (and
  relations between the meanings) of words.
• Pat is a bachelor.
• Pat is a man.
• Pat has an unpleasant personality.
• My sister is a bachelor.
• Tracy fed my dog.
• My dog ate.
• My dog is no longer hungry.

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Lexical semantics

• What is it about bachelor that tells us
  (necessarily, inescapably) about maleness? What
  is it about feeding that tells us about eating?
• Bachelor and male share something in commonto be
  maleand to be unmarried.
• (And probably to be otherwise eligible to be
  married)

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Lexical semantics

• Our knowledge about the words (and morphemes) of
  language can be thought of as a list, as a
  mental dictionarya lexicon.

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Bachelors and men

• If Pat is a bachelor, and to be a bachelor is to
  be a man and to be unmarried (and possibly to be
  eligible), then it follows that Pat is a man,
  that Pat is unmarried but eligible to be married.
  So, we have learned something about the meaning
  of bachelor and its relation to the meaning of
  man.
• Pat is a bachelor entails that Pat is a man.
• Entailment X entails Y if there can be no
  situation in which X is true but Y is not.

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Entailment and other reasoning

• Pat is a bachelor.
• Pat has an unpleasant personality.
• Pat has an unpleasant personality is not a
  necessary consequence of Pat is a bachelor. The
  first does not entail the second.
• It could be that Pat has joined a priesthood, it
  could be that Pat has unrealistically high
  standards, it could bewell, it could be any of a
  number of things.

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Meaning and lexemes(lexical items)

• Lexicon repository of unpredictable
  information.
• Pronunciation
• Meaning
• Grammatical category
• (Linked to) encyclopedic knowledge, register,
  frequency.
• We may think of this in terms of lexemes, insofar
  as kick, kicked, kicks, kicking have a
  predictable part and an unpredictable part to
  their meaning. The dictionary/lexicon need list
  only (to) kick.

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A lexeme is more abstract than a word

• And what is a word anyway?
• We can come up with some more or less arbitrary
  definitions, but they dont seem to get us much
  closer to understanding how the lexicon and
  semantic system is structured.
• A word has spaces written around it. (isnt vs.
  is not?)
• A word can stand alone (the, a)
• A word is pronounced separately (dyoowannaeet?)
• A word expresses a concept (again, the,
  although)

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What is a word anyway?

• Inuktitut qasuiirsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq
• Someone did not find a completely suitable
  resting place.tired cause.be suitable not
  someoneqasu-iir-sar-vig-ssar-si-ngit-luinar-nar
  -puq not place.for find completely
  3sg
• Kick the bucket, get the sack, hit the hay,
• Turn in, turn on, hand in, write off,
• Bigger vs. more expansive vs. expansiver.
• Im afraid shes gone and Michael Jacksoned
  herself to the point where she doesnt even
  appear human anymore (some random comment on
  some random blog, referring to California
  gubernatorial candidate Angelyne. Google michael
  jacksoned if you wish.)

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One word several lexemes

• bank1 side of a river.
• bank2 financial institution
• One word, (at least) two senses, two lexemes.
• The word bank is ambiguousit could mean bank1,
  it could mean bank2. This is different from
  vagueness, for example with large, small (Mickey
  is large, Willy is a small), or student (John,
  Mary) with respect to gender.

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Differentiating ambiguity and vagueness

• One way is with verb phrase ellipsis
• Tracy ate a sandwich and Pat did too.
• Tracy ate a sandwich and Pat ate a sandwich
  too.
• Pat visited a bank and Tracy did too.
• Pat visited a bank and Tracy visited a bank
  too.
• John is a student and Mary is too.
• Mickey is large and Willy is too.

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Dimensions of relatedness

• Bank1 (the river-side) and bank2 (the financial
  institution) are homonyms. Two basically
  unrelated words that sound the same. And are
  written the same. And are pronounced the same.
• Subdivisions are possible homographs are written
  the same, homophones are pronounced the same.
  They (very well) might vary by dialect (bury,
  berry, Barry Mary, merry, marry). They might
  share a category (wring, ring) or not (knot).

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Polysemy

• Where different senses are judged to be related,
  we have polysemy rather than homonymy. Sometimes
  a tough call.
• Bat1 implement for striking in certain games
• Bat2 furry mammal with membranous wings
• Sole1 A sort of flat fish
• Sole2 Bottom of a foot or shoe
• lt solea (Latin) via French.

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Synonymy

• A thesaurus provides synonymsdifferent words
  that share (nearly) the same meaning.
• True synonyms may not exist, there is pretty much
  always a difference in register, attitude,
  dialect, collocation, or lexical relations.
• Lawyer, attorney, counsel,
• Couch, sofa, futon,
• Little sister, small sister,
• Police, cop, pig, fuzz,

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Antonyms

• Antonyms are in opposition, and come in a number
  of different flavors.
• An animal might be alive or dead, but not both.
  You might pass or fail a test, but not both.
• Though we can make sense of undead and half-dead
  in fanciful ways.
• Reversing the perspective come/go,
  ascend/descend, up/down, in/out (reverses for
  motion, converses for more static relations)
  above/below, before/after/behind.

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Antonyms

• The opposition can be gradable as well. Something
  that is not hot is not necessarily cold, but they
  are still in opposition. Beautiful/ugly,
  fast/slow, tall/short, large/small.
• Or, they can be opposed in a non-binary way
  (taxonomic sisters) red/green/blue,
  January/September/November/December.

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Hyponymy

• Some words are related in an inclusion relation.
• Couch, furniture.
• Capybara/mammal/animal.

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Meronymy

• Meronymy Part-whole relations
• Word/sentence/paragraph/page/chapter/book
• Member-collection boat/fleet, bird/flock

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So where are we?

• The meanings of words (ahem, lexemes) are related
  to each other in many different ways. Some
  relations are prominent enough to be classified
  (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, polysems, ).
• An empirical result of these connections can be
  seen in our inference patterns.
• Fido is a dog. Fido is a mammal. Fido is a cat.

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What we know(about English, say)

• Part of an English-speakers knowledge of
  language is the information in the lexicon
  lexemes, their pronunciation, their syntactic
  category, their relationships to other lexemes,
  and whatever is left, that we might call their
  meaning.

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Back to the question of words

• We might imagine that we can come up with some
  kind of meaning (definition, say) for tie or
  wrap.
• We might observe that the relation between untie
  to tie rather like the relation between unwrap
  and wrap. And we might observe that one is simply
  the other plus un-.
• Words themselves are composed of morphemes, some
  of which are meaningful in and of themselves (and
  would have lexical entries of their own).

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Derivational morphemes

• So, alongside the content words like likely we
  have derivational morphemes like un-, together
  combining to form a word (with a predictable
  meaning) unlikely.
• Recall unrefaxeristically.
• Or antidisestablishmentarianism (opposition to
  the disestablishment of the Church of England)
• These (anti-, dis-, -ment, -ary, -ian, -ism) are
  lexemes in their own right.
• Finding the morphemes isnt trivial (ally, prism,
  canary, cement, distant), but they do seem to
  exist.

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Inflectional morphemes

• Derivational morphemes like iN- (impossible,
  irregular, incapable, intractable) are often
  distinguished from inflectional morphemes (walk,
  walks, walked) in that derivational morphemes
  carry a heavier semantic load. Inflectional
  morphemes are agreement (with, e.g., a 3sg
  subject).
• Practically, its a difficult line to draw
  precisely, but generally grammatically enforced
  morphology (agreement, tense/aspect marking) is
  in the inflectional category. Some linguists in
  fact argue that the distinction isnt a
  meaningful one, but that isnt the consensus view.

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Derivational morphology

• Derivational morphology is also capable of
  changing a words category.
• The road is wide. (adjective)
• The road widened. (verb)
• He refaxed the memo. (verb)
• He is a refaxer. (noun)
• He acted in a refaxeristic manner. (adjective)
• He acted refaxeristically. (adverb)

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Causatives/inchoatives

• A reasonably large class of verbs seem to be able
  to alternate between inchoative (change of state)
  verbs and causative verbs.
• The door is open. (adjective)
• The door opened. (verb inchoative)
• I opened the door. (verb causative)
• I sank the boat, I melted the chocolate.

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Kharia (Austro-Asiatic, Binar, India, Nepal)

• nogtem you eat
• gilte he beats
• udtem you drink (invented)
• obnogtem you feed
• obgilte he causes to beat
• obudtem you cause to drink

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Causatives

• There are languages that have a causative
  morpheme that derives feed from eat.
• English has some too, which come out differently
  depending on the specific word
• We enlarged the photograph.
• We modernized the house.
• We opened the door.

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Open v. open

• How does open in The door opened relate to open
  in I opened the door?
• Perhaps theres a hidden causative in I opened
  the door (like the hidden plural in I saw two
  deer). A prefix (or suffix) that has no
  pronunciation? I Ø-opened the door.

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Kill vs. die

• Consider too the relation between kill and die.
  What do the semantic components of kill seem to
  be?
• The surface (pronounced) form of a word may not
  fully reveal its underlying semantic structure.

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Lexical decomposition

• We might think of kill as CAUSE-die, of enter as
  CAUSE-BE-in, of give as CAUSE-HAVE.
• So semantically, Tracy gave Mary a book might
  really be Tracy CAUSE Mary HAVE a book.

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Kicking the bucket

• Sometimes whole phrases (verb phrases) can have
  an idiomatic meaning kick the bucket, buy the
  farm, They have a meaning that is not derivable
  from the component parts.
• Usually, this is tied to both the verb (tap the
  bucket, rent the farm) and the object (kick the
  pail, buy the house) together.

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Something to ponder

• Interestingly, there are some idioms that seems
  to allow a certain flexibility
• Tracy gave Pat the boot.
• Pat got the boot.
• But it isnt unlimited
• Tracy gave the boot to Pat.
• Pat has the boot.
• Pat took the boot.
• The boot ruined Pats Christmas.
• Well kick off next time with a somewhat involved
  argument from this that give, get, have (, take),
  all have HAVE as a silent component.

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