SEMANTICS HANDOUTS

(grad level)

I. THE STUDY OF MEANING

What is meaning?

Meaning is multi-layered, both commonly shared and personal, context-dependent and cultural specific

Where does meaning come from?

Meaning can come with or without language

How is meaning generated?

Something happens (Event) -> I sense what happens (Object) -> I recognize what happens (Description) ->
I generate meaning for what happens (Inferences)

How can meaning be conveyed?

Meaning can be conveyed through sign, object, object

What does semiotics study?

It studies meaning of signs in general. It covers all types of signs –visual, auditory, gestural, olfactory, and
so on – whether produced by animals or humans

How can signs be classified?

 • An arbitrary sign is one whose form bears no relation of analogy or resemblance to its referent.

Eg:

• An iconic sign is one whose form bears some relation of analogy or resemblance to its referent.

Eg:

• Natural signs: all sorts of sights, sounds and smells can be natural signs

Eg: A black cloud informs us of the possibility of rain

Treetops moving tell us that the wind is blowing

• Conventional signs have human senders as well as human receivers; each one has an intention
and an interpretation.

Eg: can be personal as when a friend rings your telephone, or impersonal and general like the warning
siren on a speeding ambulence

Types of signs:

+ Icon: visual sign, there’s similarity between the sign and what it represents. Eg:

+ Index: the sign whose relation between it and what it refers to is logically inferred. Eg:

+ Symbol: an arbitrary and conventional sign for abstract objects or relationships (chemicals, logic,
algebraic formula or diagram). Eg:

+ Signal: signals are the signs conventionally made to intentionally convey a certain message in a context

Practice 1: Which of the followings are icons, indices, or symbols?

Yawning
Earache Sweaters
nodding the head

What kind of signs are words?

What is semantics? What is the unit of lexical
semantics?
II.
MEANING, THOUGHT, AND REALITY

Intension vs. extension

Intension: Nội hàm, được tích tụ bên trong (the
concept)
Eg: a place gives the feelings of comfort
Extension: Ngoại diên, can be extended (the set of
things the concept applies to)
Eg: pictures of cozy houses

• Denotation: aspect of meaning of a word / expression which shows its potential to denote
something in or about the world.

• Sense: intension of the word / expression

• Reference: extension of the word / expression

• Referring expressions vs. referents

Vd: Người miền Bắc không hiểu người miền Trung nói. Họ không hiểu vì không biết (k có sense)
nhưng vẫn có reference và nó vẫn có nghĩa (denotation)

How are referents classified?

- Unique and non-unique: Fixed reference vs variable reference

- Concrete vs abstract: with literal meaning vs with figurative meaning
VD: bookworm (hình ảnh quyển sách vs worm => đứa trẻ đọc nhiều sách)
- Countable vs uncountable (thể hiện cách phân chia thế giới)

What are different ways of referring? (using language to describe things)

- Generic vs non-generic
+) Generic reference is made to a whole class of referents, rather than to a particular individual or
group of individual
Eg: Generic: Llamas are native to South America
The Llama is native to South America
Non-generic: The frightened Llama attacked its owner
Llams in this town are the best
 Phrase là chung chung hay ám chỉ cụ thể
- Definite vs indefinite
III.
+) Definite reference is made to one or more particular individual entities that the hearer might
have clues to define (the speaker and the hearer know what that is) (trong một số trường hợp chỉ
cần giải thích ít)
Eg: I saw Peter here yesterday
Someone has stolen the pearl
+) Indefinite reference: made to some entity or entities, but the identity of the reference is either
not known or not relevant to the message.
Eg: There’s a man at the door who wants to speak to you
He’s something in the city
(nói về cụ thể)
- Specific vs non-specific
+) Specific reference is made to a specific individual (having a specific item in mind)
+) Non-specific identities: having no specific item in mind
Eg: I hope he has bought me something nice (specific: chưa biết nó là gì)

Practice 2: State whether the following underlined words or phrases are generic or non-generic,
specific or non-specific, definite or indefinite?

1. Somebody telephoned and left a message for you.

Non-generic, indefinite, specific

2. I hope that somebody will tidy up this file cabinet.

Non-generic, indefinite, non-specific

3. The last person to leave the office should lock the door.

Non-generic, definite, specific

4. A stitch in time saves nine.

Generic, indefinite, non-specific

5. Evans sometimes forget to keep his eyes on the ball.

Non-generic, definite, specific

Practice 3: Analyze the referential ambiguity in the following underlined words / phrases?

1. I want to buy a newspaper ( “a” means any or one”)

2. Jack told Ralph that a visitor is waiting for him. (“him” can refer to both “Jack” and “Ralph”)
3. If you want to get ahead, you have to work hard
4. I’m buying a drink for everybody here. (“a drink” means one for every one or for each)

Homonymy vs. Polysemy?

 IV.
- Homonymy: nghĩa liên kết với nhau (different meaning, same forms)
- Polysemy: nghĩa liên kết với nhau (meanings derived from each other)

MEANING AND COGNITION

What does language function in the development of human perception of the world?

How correctly can language reflect the outside world?

• Lexical field:.

• Lexical gap:
Practice 4: Explain these

What are lexical relations?

- Hyponymy (bao thuộc): một từ có ý nghĩa bao hàm chung, kéo theo từ có ý nghĩa nhỏ hơn
- Meronymy (quan hệ tổng phần)
- Synonymy
- Antonymy

How can figurative language work?

Practice 5: Identify the kind of figurative language (Brinton, 2000) used in the following

1. Such a smooth wine! (synthesia)

2. The legendary beauty wrote an autobiography of her life (metonymy, tautology)
3. The country suffered a passive aggressive from the North. (oxymoron)
4. We need more heads to solve this problem. (synecdoche)
5. The lucky guy got an endowed chair. (metonymy)
6. They were totally convinced by a hard-hitting report. (personification)
7. The pen is mightier than the sword. (metonymy)
 V.
8. She loves loud colors. (synthesia)
9. They created a new initiative at the right time. (tautology)
10. What does the map say? (personification)
11. The bitter reproach killed him (synthesia, personification)
12. They have been in an on-off relationship (oxymoron)
13. The traffic is crawling (metaphor)
14. That's food for thought. (metaphor)
15. He is a giant among film directors. (metaphor)
16. Orders are orders. (tautology)
17. She is a member of the upper class. (metaphor)
18. His health is declining. (metaphor)
19. I feel down. (what happens inside people mind is not something that can put up or down) (metaphor)
20. One can't predict what Wall Street will do. (metonymy)
What is semantic change? What can be the influence of change and development of meaning on us?
(in terms of human perception and in the study of meaning)

What are the implications of lexicon-experience relationship for teaching and learning vocabulary?
LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

Linguistic Diversity:
Languages, especially members of quite different language families, differ in important ways from
one another.

Sapir – Whorf Hypothesis

• Linguistic relativity:
Structural differences between languages are paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences
(the structure of the language itself effects cognition) Eg.
• The structure of a language can strongly influence or determine someone’s World View. A World
View describes a (hopefully) consistent and integral sense of existence and provides a theoretical
framework for generating, sustaining and applying knowledge.
Eg.

• Arbitrariness: The semantic systems of different languages vary without constraint. Different
languages have different semantic features (over and above differences in lexical semantics)
Eg.
How can language have influence on thoughts?
VI.

V. MEANING AND STRUCTURE

Deep structure vs. surface structure?

Practice 6: What makes the following 3 sentences similar and different?

(1) You close the door.

(2) The door is closed by you.
(3) Close the door!
 • Propositional meaning: ARGUMENT:

PREDICATE:

• Modality:

Classification of modality?

How is modality manifested?

Practice 7: Identify the types of modality in the following

1. The fact is that they’ve broke up already.
2. You may take the books home.
3. I may have misunderstood you.
4. It’s apparently true that Stanley was not busy.
5. Duncan could be an awful nuisance when he was younger.
6. Driving in a heavy rainstorm may be dangerous.
7. We shouldn’t stay here.
8. The guys couldn’t have stayed here.
9. It’s your duty to visit your ailing parents.
10. Summer could be miserably here when I was a child.

VI. MEANING AND LOGIC

How does logic matter in linguistics?

Richard Montauge (1974) believed that tools of logic can help us to represent sentence meaning. How
effective is logic representation to the comprehension of sentence meaning?

Practice 8: Translate the following into predicate logic language

(1) You close the door.

(2) The door is closed by you.
(3) I bought her some flowers.
 (4) It was raining.
(5) They are working.
(6) Ms. Janet is now retired.
(7) Mary doesn’t smoke.
(8) Fred smokes and Kate drinks.
(9) If Bill drinks, Jenny gets angry.
(10) Carrick, who is a millionnaire, is a socialist.
(11) Emile is a cat that doesn’t purr.
(12) Jean admires Robert, who is a gangster.
(13) All students took the test.
(14) Everyone hates Jerry.
(15) Everybody didn’t visit Limerick.
(16) Someone is sleeping.
(17) One student kissed Kylie.
(18) Everyone loves someone.
(19) Most students came.
(20) Three leaves fall

• Paraphrase

• Entailment

• Presupposition

• Logico-semantic relations

VII. MEANING AND INTERACTION

• Deixis

• Utterance meaning vs. sentence meaning

• Speech acts

• Implicature

How can interaction support the interpretation of indexicals?

How can one and the same utterance be used as both constative and performative?
How can people cooperate in interaction?

How can implicature be communicated and interpreted?

VIII. The functions of language

How can the meanings of a text be interpreted?

What are the big functions of language?

How does language function in the text below?

What should language teachers / language learners focus on, language structures or language
meaning / functions? Why?