Understanding Semantics

Transcription

1 Understanding Semantics Sebastian Lobner Professor of General Linguistics, University of Dtisseldorf A member of the Hodder Headline Group LONDON Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

2 Contents Preface PART I BASIC CONCEPTS AND PHENOMENA xi l 1 Meaning and semantics Levels of meaning Expression meaning Utterance meaning Communicative meaning Sentence meaning and compositionality Grammatical meaning Syntactic structure and combination rules The principle of compositionality 14 Checklist 16 Further reading 17 Notes 17 2 Descriptive, social and expressive meaning Meanings are concepts The meaning of a word The meaning of a sentence Descriptive meaning Descriptive meaning and reference Denotations and truth conditions Proposition and sentence type Meaning and social interaction: social meaning Expressions with social meaning Social meaning in Japanese Meaning and subjectivity: expressive meaning Expressive meaning Social versus expressive meaning Connotations 35 Checklist 36

3 vi CONTENTS Exercises 37 Further reading 37 Notes 38 3 Meanings and readings Lexemes Homonymy, polysemy and vagueness Homonymy Polysemy Vagueness Synonymy Sentence readings and meaning shifts Syntactic ambiguity Interpretation in context Disambiguation and elimination Metonymical shift Metaphorical shift Differentiation The Principle of Consistent Interpretation Meaning shifts and polysemy 53 Checklist 54 Exercises 54 Further reading 55 Notes 55 4 Meaning and logic Logical basics Donald Duck and Aristotle The Principle of Polarity Negation Logical properties of sentences Logical relations between sentences Logical entailment Logical equivalence Logical contrariety Logical contradiction Logical relations involving logically true or false sentences Logical relations under the assumption of contingency Sentential logic Logical relations between words Logic and meaning The semantic status of logical equivalence The semantic status of logical entailment 80

4 CONTENTS vii Logic and semantics 81 Checklist 82 Exercises 82 Further reading 83 Notes 84 5 Meaning relations Hyponymy The meaning relation Regular compounds Oppositions Antonyms Directional opposites Complementaries Heteronyms Converses Lexical fields The notion of a lexical field Small fields Taxonomies Meronymies 96 Checklist 97 Exercises 97 Further reading 98 Notes 98 6 Predication Predications contained in a sentence Predicates and arguments Verbs Major types of verbs Referential verb arguments Deciding on the number of arguments Nouns and adjectives Major types of nouns Major types of adjectives Arguments of nouns and adjectives in predicative use Predicate logic notation Thematic roles Selectional restrictions Selectional restrictions of verbs The process of fusion Selectional restrictions and meaning shifts 117

5 viii CONTENTS Semantic irregularity Summary 119 Checklist 120 Exercises 120 Further reading 121 Notes 121 PART II THEORETICAL APPROACHES Meaning components The structuralist approach Language as a system of signs Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations Applying the structuralist approach to meaning Semantic units: morphemes and lexemes Paradigmatic and syntagmatic semantic relations Semantic features Binary semantic features Application to paradigmatic relations Application to combinatorial meaning properties Ideal properties of semantic features Evaluation of the binary feature approach Semantic formulae Dowty's decompositional semantics Jackendoff's Conceptual Semantics Semantic primes: Wierzbicka's Natural Semantic Metalanguage Summary and evaluation of the approaches to decomposition 148 Checklist 150 Exercises 150 Further reading 151 Notes Meaning and language comparison Translation problems Headache, international Relativism and universalism Berlin and Kay's investigation of colour terms Consequences 167 Checklist 168 Exercises 168 Further reading 169 Notes 169

6 CONTENTS ix 9 Meaning and cognition Categories and concepts Prototype Theory The traditional model of categorization Prototypes Fuzzy boundaries Family resemblance Degrees of membership The prototype model of categorization What kinds of entities are prototypes? Which features make up the prototype? Similarity The hierarchical organization of categories The basic level Properties of the basic level Challenges to Prototype Theory Graded membership vs graded structure Fuzzy boundaries Summary Semantics and Prototype Theory Cognitive semantics Polarization Flexible concepts: vagueness Means of differentiation Summary Semantic knowledge Summary Checklist Exercises Further reading Notes Personal knowledge vs cultural knowledge The apple juice question Cultural knowledge vs semantic knowledge Sentence meaning and formal semantics Japanese numerals: a simple example of a compositional analysis The system of numerals Formal description The general scheme A small fragment of English The grammar of the fragment The predicate logic language PL-F: its grammar 219

7 x CONTENTS Translating the fragment into predicate logic Model-theoretic semantics AmodelforPL-F Interpretation rules for PL-F Application to the translations of fragment sentences Model-theoretic semantics Possible-world semantics Possible worlds Intensions Intensional models Logical properties and relations The scope and limits of possible-world semantics Scope and potential Limits Possible-world semantics vs mentalistic semantics The development of possible-world semantics 246 Checklist 247 Exercises 248 Further reading 249 Notes 249 References 251 Index 255