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Semantics

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University ,Mardan

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Compiled and edited by Pir Sardar Shah
Associate Professor of English,Government College Takht Bhai

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 2

SEMANTICS
Course contents of Semantics

S.NO. TOPIC PAGE

1 Introduction 1-4
2 Early theories of 6-12
meaning (Ogden and
Richards; Ferdinand
de Saussure)
3 Semantic field 13-15
4 Types of Meaning 16-18
5 Componential 19-20
analysis
6 Sense Relations/ 21-24
Lexical Relations
(Hyponymy;
Synonymy; Antonymy
; Homonymy and
Polysemy)
7 Syntactic Semantics 25-33
(Contradiction,
Ambiguity, Semantic
anomaly, Entailment,
Presupposition)

Introduction
3

What is Semantics?

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases

and sentences. In semantic
analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the
words conventionally mean,
rather than on what an individual speaker might want
them to mean on
a particular occasion. This approach is concerned with
objective or general meaning and
avoids trying to account for subjective or local meaning.
Doing semantics is attempting to
spell out what it is we all know when we behave as if we
share knowledge of the meaning
of a word, a phrase, or a sentence in a language.

What is Meaning?

While semantics is the study of meaning in language,

there is more interest in certain
aspects of meaning than in others. We have already
ruled out special meanings that
one individual might attach to words. We can go further
and make a broad distinction
between conceptual meaning and associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning covers
those basic, essential components of meaning that are
conveyed by the literal use of a
word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are
designed to describe. Some of the
basic components of a word like needle in English might
include “thin, sharp, steel
instrument.” These components would be part of the
conceptual meaning of needle.
However, different people might have different
associations or connotations attached
to a word like needle. They might associate it with
4

“pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or

“drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find”
(especially in a haystack), and
these associations may differ from one person to the
next. These types of associations
are not treated as part of the word’s conceptual
meaning.
In a similar way, some people may associate the
expression low-calorie, when used
to describe a product, with “healthy,” but this is not part
of the basic conceptual
meaning of the expression (i.e. “producing a small
amount of heat or energy”).
Poets, song-writers, novelists, literary critics, advertisers
and lovers may all be interested in how words can evoke
certain aspects of associative meaning, but in linguistic
semantics we’re more concerned with trying to analyze
conceptual meaning.

Meaning is a convention which has been invented and

accepted by the speakers of the same language. The
word which signifies a certain object has been invented
and accepted for the corresponding object to be
continued for long. To convey the correct message or
concept, the grammatical structure and the lexical
relationship between the words are also very much
significant.

For example:

The man bit the dog.

The dog bit the man.

Both sentences are grammatically correct but the first

sentence does not convey the correct meaning. To
convey a correct meaningful message the following
requirements are to noted.

1. Correct choice of lexical items

5

2. Grammatically correct language

3. Corresponding sequence between the
word(signifier) and the concept(signified)

Ogden and Richards’ Theory of

Meaning
  I.A. Richards analyzed human communication and co-
formulated a theory known as the “Theory of Meaning”
6

(Ogden and Richards, 1927). Ogden and Richards’ theory

attempts to not only describe the approaches humans
take when communicating, but also to understand how
communication is “lost” when not done correctly.The
“Theory of Meaning” is a concept that has been present
in communication since the first humans learned to
communicate. As communicators, we are aware that
nearly everything we say has meaning on some level to
ourselves as well as those we share our words with.
According to Ogden and Richards there is not a single
“correct” meaning associated with each and every word
because each word means something different to each
person, or more simply, meanings don’t reside in words,
they reside in people……….

Ogden and Richards developed the “Symbol Theory” in

order to explain how words expressed in communication
evoke images, thus providing a personal meaning based
on experience. Symbols are inherently arbitrary by
themselves, however, when used in conjunction with
one another, meaning is created for the ideas being
expressed. Problems in communication arise when
people attempt to communicate through the use of
arbitrary words because they have no exact or clear
meaning. Words are variables that can assume different
meanings depending on the context in which they are
used A good example of a symbol is text. Text, by itself,
is meaningless, as it draws no relation to anything
outside itself. However, when we combine text with a
word and even a picture, we create a workable
definition from which to operate. This is the
fundamental principle behind Ogden and Richards’
theory.
 
     Ogden and Richards categorize meanings in terms of
signs and symbols where signs are natural
representations of something beyond themselves, such
as a sound, whereas symbols are specialized types of
signs, such as text . In both cases, signs and symbols are
meaningless unto themselves. Consider the word “cat.”
Alone, the word has no meaning, as it does not resemble
what we perceive to be a cat, nor does it possess any
7

direct link to the sounds or behaviors of a cat, as we

know it, thus the word is merely an arbitrary symbol.
Ogden and Richards use the idea of “natural association”
to link signs and symbols with actual objects such as a
cat.
 
     In order to illustrate his point that there is a direct
relationship between symbols and thought, Ogden and
Richards created the “Semantic Triangle.” The triangle is
a simple model in which the three factors involved with
the statement or idea are placed in the corners and the
relationships between them are represented by the
sides (Ogden and Richards. An example of how this idea
works is as follows:

 
 
     One peak of the triangle would be the symbol (a
word). Another peak would be a thought, such as words
to describe the symbol. Finally, the image we create in
our minds would become the referent. Through the use
of the Semantic Triangle, Ogden and Richards believe
they have found a way to connect all words to their
meaning . There are relationships between all three
factors, represented by the sides of the triangle. The
relationship between the thought and symbol are
causal, meaning the symbol evokes an attitude or a
proposed effect on another person. Similarly, there is a
relationship between the thought and the referent,
though the relationship can be either direct, such as
something we can see in front of us, or indirect, such as
an image or idea about something we have seen in
another instance. Finally, the relationship between the
symbol and the referent is purely indirect in that it is an
arbitrary relationship created by someone who wishes
the symbol to represent the referent (Ogden and
8

Richards, 1927, p. 11). As demonstrated by the

illustration above, the word “dog” is associated in the
mind of the reader as a particular animal. The word is
not the animal, but the association links the two, thus all
three elements are required in an irreducible triad for
the signs to operate correctly .

Traditional approach:

To the old philosophers such as Plato and Socrates,

the semantic relationship was that of naming of significant’. This
traditional view of the relationship between name and things is
customarily represented by the triangle of ‘signification,’
sometimes referred to as ‘the semiotic triangle’:

 (Thought/concept/sense/image/reference)

 
Sound______________________________   signifier

Thing ______________________________     signified

Thought____________________________ significant

Analytical or ‘Referential’ Approach

The traditional approach gave birth to the analytical approach. An
important analytical approach is the one by Saussure. Saussure’s
theory of meaning is based on speech word relationship. Saussure
uses the analogy of a sheet of paper whose one side is sound, the
other thought, and therefore thought cannot be divided from
sound nor sound from thought Linguistics then operates on the
borderland where the elements of sound and thought combine;
their combination produces a form not a substance The sound, is
the – signifier’, the thought is the ‘signified’ and the thing signified
is the significant There is no direct relationship between word and
the things they ‘stand for the word symbolize a thought or
reference which in turns refers to the features of even we are
talking about. We know that the three sounds dog we use in
speech refer to the four legged, domestic animal form an arbitrary
or conventional symbol. The dog, the living creature that we see
with our eyes, we may call the referend and the picture of it that
we have in our minds as we speak, whether a memory picture or
one actually seen at the moment may be called image.

Image= symbol=Referent.
9

The symbol (name or significant) is the phonetic shape of the

‘word, the sounds which make it up . The reference (sense of
thought) is ‘the information which the name (symbol) conveys to
the hearer’ whereas the thing (significant or referent) is the non-
linguistic feature or event we are talking about. According to the
Referential theory meaning is a reciprocal and reversible relation
between name and sense. It can be investigated by starting from
either end: But one can start from the name and look for the
sense or senses attached to it, as all dictionaries do: but one can
also start from the sense and look for the name or names
connected with.

The Referential theoreticians wish to confine themselves to

formal meaning because the contextual-or functional level of
language is difficult to describe rigorously and scientifically. The
analytics or referential approach seeks to grasp the essence of
meaning by resolving it into main components.

According to the theory, there is no direct connection between

words and the things they stand for, the word symbolizes a
thought or reference which in its turn refers to the feature or
event we are talking about.

The Distributional Approach

The distributional analysis of meaning is the structural treatment

of linguistic meaning. To facilitate a scientific study of meaning
some linguists recommend to study meaning as a phenomenon
isolated from outside world human experience, that is to say, the
meaning of a word is to be understood as the range of its
occurrences in sentences consisting of other words. Just as there
are probably no words exactly like in meaning in .all contexts, so
there will probably be no two words in   any language sharing
exactly the same lexical Environment (distribution).

This approach studies meaning as syntagmatic relations

(collocation) and paradigmatic relations (sets). That is to say, the
meaning of a word is to be understood as the range of its
occurrences in sentences consisting of other word?. Just as there
are probably no words exactly alike in meaning- in all contexts, so
there will probably be no two words in      any language sharing
exactly the ‘same lexical environment (distribution)

The distributional hypothesis in linguistics is derived from

the semantic theory of language usage, i.e. words that are used
and occur in the same contexts tend to purport similar meanings.
10

The underlying idea that "a word is characterized by the company

it keeps" was popularized by Firth in the 1950s.
The Distributional Hypothesis originated in linguistics, it is now
receiving attention in cognitive science especially regarding the
context of word use.
In recent years, the distributional hypothesis has provided the
basis for the theory of similarity-based generalization in language
learning: the idea that children can figure out how to use words
they've rarely encountered before by generalizing about their use
from distributions of similar words.
The distributional hypothesis suggests that the more semantically
similar two words are, the more distributionally similar they will
be in turn, and thus the more that they will tend to occur in
similar linguistic contexts.
Operational (Contextual or Functional) Approach

The contextual theoreticians said that that meaning or concept

was a set of operations: ‘the true meaning of a word is to be
found by observing what a man does with it and not what he says
about it so the meaning of a word is its use in language. And Firth
defined the word as a lexical substitution counter’ so, the words
were to be studied “according to their functions, in the contexts
they occurred. As a matter of fact, the operational theory is
concerned with meaning in speech, the referential with meaning
in language.

The functional approach treats words as tools. it establishes a

communicative relationship between the speaker and the hearer.
It studied meaning in space and time along’ with not only the
relevant objects and actions taking place at the particular time,
but also  depicts the shared knowledge  by the speaker and hearer
of what has been said earlier. It must also be taken to include the
tacit_ acceptance by the speaker and hearer of all the relevant
conventions, beliefs and presuppositions taken for granted’ by the
members of the speech-community to which the speaker and
hearer belong. In terms of contexts of situation the meaning of
utterance includes both, reference’ (denotation) of individual
words and the meaning of the whole sentences. So it deals with
the total utterance as a whole. We can see differences of personal
status of living, family, friends and social relations, degrees of
intimacy, relative age, and other such factors, irrelevant to the
considerations of sentences.

Meaning in language is therefore not a single relation but involves

set of multiple and various relations between the utterance and
its parts and the relevant features and components of the
environment, both cultural and physical, and forming part of the
11

more extensive system of interpersonal relations involved in the

existence of human societies”

Hence sentences are brought into multiple relationships with the

irrelevant components of the environment, Language is studied
functionally J.R. Firth has suggested a typical outline context to
bring the utterance and its parts into relationship with the
following categories:

The relevant features of participants (person, personalities)

1. The verbal action of the participants.

2.The non-verbal/ action of the participants. ,

3. The effect of the verbal action

Semantic Field Theory

Basic to this theory is the concept of FERDINAND DE

SAUSSURE that each word in a language is surrounded
by a network of associations which connect with still
other terms. It explains the vocabulary or lexicon of a
language as a system of interrelated network or
 12

semantic fields. Words that are interrelated may belong

to the same semantic field, for example, tree, branch,
root, flower, stem and fruit. Sometimes, we see overlap
between fields, for example, the field of flower, and tree
may overlap in relation to plant and grow. This theory
provides the situation of collocation. The items for
collocation are selected from the lexicon of the same
field. For example, plant collocates with growing, flower
with bloom, letters with writing etc.

These networks and collocations are built on sense

relations in a language. The figure below shows the
network of associations of terms which converge to a
certain point.

Plant. → Grow, Bloom

Plantation, Irrigation, Cultivation

Planting, Reeping, Binding, Collecting

Fertilizer, Pesticides, Seeds

Farmer, Cultivator, Peasant

Thus the associative field of a word is formed by an

intricate network of associations on the basis of similarity,
contiguity, sensation, name, collocation etc. These
association may be identified by the linguistic method by
collecting most obvious terms like synonymy, antonymy,
hyponymy, polysemy etc. Some of the associations are
embodied in figurative languages such as metaphor,
similes, proverbs, idioms,etc. As one of Ferdinand de
Saussure's pupil expressed it:

"The associative field is a halo which surrounds the sign

whose exterior fringes become merged."

The associative field is open and no finite limits can be

assigned to any given field.

According to this theory, the meaning is classified into

two broad categories. Contextual and Formal Meaning.
13

Contextual meaning relates a formal item or

pattern to an element of the situation. There is a regular
association between a linguistic item and something
which is extra-linguistic, something (which is part of the
situation language rather than part of the language
itself).
In Formal Meaning,  the relationship between a
linguistic item, pattern or term from a system and other
linguistic items, patterns, or items from the system
belonging to the same level by language. Formal
meaning can be understood by collocating and
contrasting a lexical item with other lexical items. The
lexical item "cat" for instance, has the potentiality for
collocating with, mew, parr, lap, milk, fur, tail etc. It also
contrasts with dog, mouse, kitten etc. Such items which
fall into a context or set of contexts are referred to as an
association field.

In recent years, a lot of work has been done in

relation to the semantic field. Scholars have investigated
lexical systems in the vocabularies of different languages
with particular reference to such fields as kinship,
colour, weights, and measures military ranks and various
kinds of knowledge.

Diagrams of Semantic Fields

14

Seven Types of Meaning

There are at least seven types of meaning  in semantics
according to Geoffrey Leech (1974), these are:

1. Conceptual meaning (logical, cognitive, or denotative

content)
It refers to the dictionary meaning which indicates the
concepts. In reading we can find many different words
have the same conceptual meanings. Take the word
walk as an example, the conceptual meaning or the
primary dictionary meaning is to move forward by
placing one foot in front of the other. There are also a
few other words that, according to the dictionary, mean
to move forward on foot, etc.
15

2. Connotative meaning (what is communicated by

virtue of what language refers to)
It refers to the associations that are connected to a
certain word or the emotional suggestions related to
that word. The connotative meanings of a word exist
together with the denotative meanings. The
connotations for the word snake could include evil or
danger.

3. Social meaning (what is communicated of the social

circumstances of language use)
It refers to the usage of language in and by society which
has big proportions in determining the meaning that
certain speaker has to use and wants to convey, those
factors include social class of the speaker and hearer and
the degree of formality. Only part of the social meaning
of a conversation is carried by words. Take saying hello
or talking about the weather. Often such talk has little
dictionary meaning. It is a way of being friendly or polite.

4. Affective meaning (what is communicated of the

feeling and attitudes of the speaker/writer)
It refers to the speaker’s feeling / attitude towards the
content or the ongoing context.It is important to
remember that each individual will have a different
affective meaning for a word. As such, only the person
using a word will be aware of the particular affective
meaning that they hold with the word. For example, we
can discuss the word winter further. The word winter
denotatively refers to a time period during which either
the northern or southern hemisphere is furthest away
from the sun.Different use of stress and intonation also
provides a striking contrast in the feelings and attitudes
communicated through an utterance. For example,She’s
very clever.may mean she is not clever.
16

5. Reflected meaning (what is communicated through

association with another sense of the same expression)
It refers to terms which have more than one meaning
surfaces at the same time, so there is a kind of
ambiguity. It is as if one or more unintended meanings
were inevitably thrown back rather like light or sound
reflected on a surface. For instance, if I use the medical
expression chronic bronchitis, it is difficult for the more
colloquial emotive meaning of chronic, 'bad,' not to
intrude as well. . . . Sometimes, such coincidental,
'unwanted' meanings cause us to change a lexical item
for another.

6. Collocative meaning (what is communicated through

association with words which tend to occur in the
environment of another word)
It refers to the associations a word acquires on account  
of   the   meanings of words which tend to occur in its
environment.In other words, it is that part of the word-
meaning suggested by the words that go before or come
after a word in question, for instance, heavy news (a
piece of sad news); heavy schedule (a very tight
schedule); fast color (the color that does not fade); fast
friend (a reliable friend); fast woman (a lady of easy
virtue), etc.

7. Thematic meaning (what is communicated by the way

in which the message is organized in terms of order and
emphasis).
It relates to or constitutes a topic of discourse, the
meaning that the word conveys is that of something that
is connected with the theme of something
Types 2-6 are also categorized as associative meaning.

Componential Analysis
17

The componential analysis deals with the structural

approach of vocabulary in form of a small set of very
general elements of meaning called components and
their various possible combinations.

The total meaning of a word is broken up into its basic

distinct components. Each component is expressed by a
feature symbol with +(plus) or –(minus ) to indicate the
presence or absence of certain feature. The examples of
some of the features are given below:

Meaning expressed by absence/presence features

indicated by +-
Human +human +animate
Cow -human +animate
Adult + human +animate +adult +animate
Child +human +animate -adult
Meaning expressed by contrast/binary opposites
Man +human +adult +male
woman +human +adult -male
Boy +human -adult +male
Child +human -adult +male -male
Bull -human +animate +male
Cow -human +animate -male

It can work only when there is a clear distinction,that of

male vs female or human vs animal and married vs
unmarried.it can help us to bring out the logical features
ihherent in a word and thus exclude some meaning.for
example if we analyse the word bachelor as +man –
married,the meaning of married bachelor can be
excluded. It also helps us understand meaning relations
such as synonymy-meaning inclusion and antonymy –
meaning exciusion.

Contrasts may also be shown through

antonyms,e.g.rich/poor, old/young, deep/shallow.
Antonyms show two two extremes but between two
extremes we have various stages. These various stages
18

may be expressed through some structural

constructions:

The river is neither deep nor shallow.

John is neither poor nor rich.

Some examples in which the opposite is entailed and

cannot be entailed are given below:

Juli is married to Jonn.

It entails

John is married to Juli.

But juli is the wife of John.

It cannot entail as john is the wife of Juli. is not possible

The componential analysis of meaning is helpful in

making conceptual distinctions and contrast for
understanding the meaning. But it does explain vague or
indefinite where we are less sure about the exact nature
of objects and concepts.

Lexical relations/ Sense relations

When we are characterizing the meaning of each word,

not in terms of its component features, but in terms of
its relationship to other words, this approach is used in
the semantic description of language and treated as the
analysis of lexical relations. The lexical relations are
synonymy (conceal/hide), antonymy (shallow/deep) and
hyponymy (daffodil/flower).
19

Synonymy
Two or more words with very closely related meanings
are called synonyms. They can often, though not always,
be substituted for each other in sentences. In the
appropriate circumstances, we can say, What was his
answer? or What was his reply? with much the same
meaning. Other common examples of synonyms are the
pairs: almost/nearly, big/large, broad/wide,
buy/purchase, cab/taxi, car/automobile, couch/sofa,
freedom/ liberty.

Synonymy is not necessarily “total sameness.” There are

many occasions when one
word is appropriate in a sentence, but its synonym
would be odd. For example,
whereas the word answer fits in the sentence Sandy
had only one answer correct on the test., the word reply
would sound odd. Synonymous forms may also differ in
terms of formal versus informal uses. The sentence My
father purchased a large automobile. ,has virtually the
same meaning as My dad bought a big car, with four
synonymous replacements, but the second version
sounds much more casual or informal than the first.
Antonymy
Two forms with opposite meanings are called antonyms.
Some common examples are
the pairs: alive/dead, big/small, fast/slow, happy/sad,
hot/cold, long/short, male/
female, married/single, old/new, rich/poor, true/false.
Antonyms are usually divided into two main types,
“gradable” (opposites along a
scale) and “non-gradable” (direct opposites). Gradable
antonyms, such as the pair big/
small, can be used in comparative constructions like I’m
bigger than you and A pony is smaller than a
horse. Also, the negative of one member of a gradable
pair does not
20

necessarily imply the other. For example, the sentence

My car isn’t old, doesn’t necessarily mean My car is
new.

With non-gradable antonyms (also called

“complementary pairs”), comparative
constructions are not normally used. We don’t typically
describe someone as deader or more dead than
another. Also, the negative of one member of a non-
gradable pair does
imply the other member. That is, My grandparents
aren’t alive does indeed mean My grandparents are
dead. Other non-gradable antonyms in the earlier list
are the pairs: male/female, married/single and
true/false.
Although we can use the “negative test” to identify non-
gradable antonyms in a
language, we usually avoid describing one member of an
antonymous pair as the
negative of the other. For example, while undress can be
treated as the opposite of
dress, it doesn’t mean “not dress.” It actually means “do
the reverse of dress.”
Antonyms of this type are called reversives. Other
common examples are enter/exit, pack/unpack,
lengthen/shorten, raise/lower, tie/untie.
Hyponymy
When the meaning of one form is included in the
meaning of another, the relationship
is described as hyponymy. Examples are the pairs:
animal/dog, dog/poodle, vegetable/
carrot, flower/rose, tree/banyan. The concept of
“inclusion” involved in this relationship is the idea that if
an object is a rose, then it is necessarily a flower, so the
meaning
of flower is included in the meaning of rose. Or, rose is a
hyponym of flower.
21

When we consider hyponymous connections, we are

essentially looking at the
meaning of words in some type of hierarchical
relationship.

We can represent the

in
fw
b
v
k
s
p
o
ld
m
u
a
re
c
th
relationships between a set of words such as animal,
ant, asp, banyan, carrot,

Looking at the diagram, we can say that “horse is a

hyponym of animal” or
“cockroach is a hyponym of insect.” In these two
examples, animal and insect are
g
called the superordinate (= higher-level) terms. We can
also say that two or more
words that share the same superordinate term are co-
hyponyms. So, dog and horse are
co-hyponyms and the superordinate term is animal.
The relationship of hyponymy capture the concept of “is
a kind of,” as when we give the
meaning of a word by saying, “an asp is a kind of snake.”
Sometimes the only thing we
know about the meaning of a word is that it is a hyponym
of another term. That is, we
may know nothing more about the meaning of the word
asp other than that it is a kind
of snake or that banyan is a kind of tree.
22

Prototypes
While the words canary, cormorant, dove, duck,
flamingo, parrot, pelican and robin
are all equally co-hyponyms of the superordinate bird,
they are not all considered
to be equally good examples of the category “bird.”
According to some researchers,
the most characteristic instance of the category “bird” is
robin. The idea of “the
lk
a
w
23

characteristic instance” of a category is known as the

prototype. The concept of a
prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words,
like bird, not in terms of
component features (e.g. “has feathers,” “has wings”),
but in terms of resemblance
to the clearest example.
Homophones When two or more different (written)
forms have the same pronunciation but different
spelling, they are described as homophones. Common
examples are bare/bear, meat/meet, flour/
flower, pail/pale, right/write, sew/so and to/too/two.
Homonyms
We use the term homonyms when one form (written or
spoken) has two or more
unrelated meanings, as in these examples:
bank (of a river) – bank (financial institution)
bat (flying creature) – bat (used in sports)
mole (on skin) – mole (small animal)
pupil (at school) – pupil (in the eye)
race (contest of speed) – race (ethnic group).
Homonyms are words that have separate histories and
meanings, but have
accidentally come to have exactly the same form.
Polysemy
When two or more words have the same form and
related meanings, we have
what is known as polysemy. Polysemy can be defined as
one form (written or
spoken) having multiple meanings that are all related by
extension. Examples are the word
head,used to refer to the object on top of your body,
froth on top of a glass of beer, person at
the top of a company or department, and many other
things. Other examples of polysemy
are foot (of person, of bed, of mountain) or run (person
does, water does, colors do).
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If we aren’t sure whether different uses of a single word

are examples of homonymy or
polysemy, we can check in a dictionary. If the word has
multiple meanings (i.e. it’s
polysemous), then there will be a single entry, with a
numbered list of the different
meanings of that word. If two words are treated as
homonyms, they will typically have
two separate entries. In most dictionaries, bank, mail,
mole and sole are clearly treated as
homonyms whereas face, foot, get, head and run are
treated as examples of polysemy.
Word play
These last three lexical relations are the basis of a lot of
word play, usually for
humorous effect. In the nursery rhyme Mary had a little
lamb, we think of a small
animal, but in the comic version Mary had a little lamb,
some rice and vegetables, we
think of a small amount of meat. The polysemy of lamb
allows the two interpretations.
We make sense of the riddle Why are trees often
mistaken for dogs? by recognizing the
homonymy in the answer: Because of their bark.

Metonymy
The relatedness of meaning found in polysemy is
essentially based on similarity. The
head of a company is similar to the head of a person on
top of and controlling the body.
There is another type of relationship between words,
based simply on a close connection
in everyday experience. That close connection can be
based on a container–contents
relation (bottle/water, can/juice), a whole–part relation
(car/wheels, house/roof) or a
representative–symbol relationship (king/crown, the
25

President/the White House). Using

one of these words to refer to the other is an example of
metonymy.

Collocation.
with other words. If you ask a
thousand people what they think of when you say
hammer, more than half will say
nail. If you say table, they’ll mostly say chair, and butter
elicits bread, needle elicits
thread and salt elicits pepper. One way we seem to
organize our knowledge of words is
simply on the basis of collocation, or frequently occurring
together.

Syntactic Semantics
The meaning of a complex linguistic expression is
determined by the
meaning of its parts and the way those parts are
combined.
We understand the meaning of a sentence because we
know what the single
words in it mean and we have an algorithm of some kind
for combining them.
With this algorithm, by combining individual word
meanings, a phrase
meaning is produced, and by combining phrase
meanings, the meaning of a
bigger phrase is produced, and so on, ultimately
producing the sentence
26

meaning.
Interpretation is done on a syntactically analyzed
linguistic object, not on a
string of words.
Semantics is fed directly by syntax and syntactic
constituents (at some level)
are units for purposes of semantic composition.

Association between a word and its meaning varies from

language to
language. But the principles of semantic co

Presupposition
In a more general way, we
design our linguistic messages on the basis of large-scale
assumptions about what our
listeners already know. Some of these assumptions may
be mistaken, of course, but
mostly they’re appropriate. What a speaker (or writer)
assumes is true or known by a
listener (or reader) can be described as a
presupposition.
If someone tells you Your brother is waiting outside,
there is an obvious presupposition
that you have a brother. If you are asked Why did you
arrive late?, there is a presupposition that you did arrive
late. And if you are asked the question When did you
stop
smoking?, there are at least two presuppositions
involved. In asking this question, the
speaker presupposes that you used to smoke and that
you no longer do so. Questions like
this, with built-in presuppositions, are very useful
devices for interrogators or trial
lawyers. If the defendant is asked by the prosecutor,
Okay, Mr. Buckingham, how
fast were you going when you ran the red light?, there is
a presupposition that
27

Mr. Buckingham did in fact run the red light. If he simply

answers the How fast part of
the question, by giving a speed, he is behaving as if the
presupposition is correct.
One of the tests used to check for the presuppositions
underlying sentences involves
negating a sentence with a particular presupposition and
checking if the presupposition
remains true. Whether you say My car is a wreck or the
negative version My car is not a
wreck, the underlying presupposition (I have a car)
remains true despite the fact that the
two sentences have opposite meanings. This is called
the “constancy under negation”
test for identifying a presupposition. If someone says, I
used to regret marrying him, but I
don’t regret marrying him now, the presupposition (I
married him) remains constant
even though the verb regret changes from affirmative to
negative.

Ambiguity
Ambiguity is a term used to characterise phenomena
that have more than only one meaning. These meanings
are distinct from each other and have no close schema
in common. That is why a single expression may lead to
multiple interpretations. In natural language many
words, strings of words and sentences are ambiguous,
simply because of the fact that numerous words cover
several distinct meanings, or specific structural elements
give rise to different readings. That means that “an
expression or utterance is ambiguous if it can be
interpreted in more than one way” There are several
forms of ambiguity to be distinguished – according to
their trigger:
Lexical Ambiguity
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Lexical ambiguity is concerned with multiple

interpretations of lexemes. A word is ambiguous if it
involves two lexical items that have identical forms, but
have distinct, i.e. unrelated meanings. There are
numerous examples of lexical ambiguity. A clear-cut one
is the lexeme ball. This word may either denote the
round object which is used for several sports, like
football, volleyball or basketball, or it can be used to
refer to a large formal dancing party. Another example is
the following sentence: You should have seen the bull we
got from the Pope. The sentence is ambiguous, because
the word bull may stand for several distinct things –
either a male animal of different kinds, a swearword or
an official order or statement from the Pope. As
ambiguity is context dependent lexical disambiguation
(knowing which word meaning has been used) is quite
easy in most cases when considering previous
expectations and context .
The most classical example of lexical ambiguity is bank,
which may either denote an organisation providing
financial services, or the side of a river – just to mention
two of the lexeme’s possible meanings.
Further examples of lexical ambiguity are:
bright - a bright (intelligent) person vs. bright (sunny)
weather
file - arranged collection of papers vs. metal tool
Structural Ambiguity
Structural ambiguity is a result of two or more different
syntactic structures that can be attributed to one string
of words. That means that a sentence is structurally
ambiguous not because it contains a single lexeme that
has several distinct meanings, but because the syntactic
structure of the sentence causes multiple
interpretations.
(1) Young boys and girls love the adventure playground.
This sentence is syntactically ambiguous, because the
reference of young is unclear. There are two possible
29

interpretations of the subject. It may either be

that [young boys] and girls love the adventure
playground, or young [boys and girls] love [it]. The
structural analysis shows that the sentence may be
interpreted in a way that young only refers to the boys,
or it may be understood as characterising the boys as
well as the girls.
(2) Flying planes can be dangerous.
This often quoted example of structural (also called
syntactic) ambiguity comes from Noam Chomsky.
Sentences that contain lexemes that change their word
form or even word class depending on the sentence’s
interpretation are part of this category. Flying planes in
this example sentence may be understood as “to fly
planes” as well as “planes, which fly”. Therefore, the
lexeme flying can be interpreted as the gerund form of a
verb in a verb phrase, or as an attribute of a noun
phrase.
Lyons’ examples for grammatical ambiguity are the
following:
(3) They can fish.
The ambiguous interpretation is a result of “the double
classification” of fish (either intransitive verb or noun) as
well as of can (either auxiliary or transitive verb).(as a
verb can means to preserve food in a can)
(4) beautiful girl’s dress
This is an example similar to the first one of structural
ambiguity. It is a question of reference and therefore,
may either be understood as [beautiful girl’s]
dress or beautiful [girl’s dress]. Is the
adjective beautiful attributed to the girl or to the dress?
That question makes the reading of the sentence
ambiguous.
(5) I saw the man with a telescope.
The sentence is ambiguous. It may mean-I saw the man
with the help of a telescope or I saw the man who had a
telescope.
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Contradiction
A contradictory sentence (or a contradiction) is a
sentence which is necessarily false, because of the
senses of the words in the sentence.

EXAMPLES: Elephants are not animals.  Cats are fish.     A

man is a butterfly.

There are also pairs of sentences that contradict each

other. Here, the truth of one sentence implies the
falseness of the other: if one sentence is true, the other
is necessarily false. This kind of relation is referred to
as contradiction or negative entailment. In many cases,
the contradiction is based on antonymy between lexical
items: It is cold in here contradicts It is hot in here.

Examples :

A is CONTRADICTORY therefore it can never be true.

There is no possible situation describable by A.

A: Lee punched Kim with his fist, but his fist did not
touch her.
A and B are CONTRADICTORY therefore A and B cannot
both be true– a situation describable by A cannot also
be a situation describable by B.
A: Lee is dead.
B: Lee is not dead.
Sometimes, contradictory sentences can be used for
certain discourse
effects.
A: Is Mary smart?
31

B: She is [smart], and she isn’t [smart].

C:She is smart in some respects but not in other respects.

Entailment
    
In pragmatics (linguistics), entailment is the relationship
between two sentences where the truth of one (A)
requires the truth of the other (B). For example, the
sentence (A) The president was assassinated. entails (B)
The president is dead.

What is entailment?

Entailment is a concept that refers to a specific kind of

relationship between two sentences. More specifically,
entailment means that if one sentence is true, then
another sentence would also have to be true: the
second sentence would be entailed by the first
sentence. 

Another way to prove entailment between two

sentences is to demonstrate that if the one sentence is
false, then the other sentence must also be
false. Entailment is closely related to the concept of
logical consequence. Within logic, the idea that if A is
true, then B must be true too is nothing other than a
form of entailment. 

Usage and rules

An example of entailment can be found in the following

pair of sentences.

Statement A: "I will turn 28 this year;"

Statement B: "I am currently living."

Entailment is present here because the truth of A

requires the truth of B: if I am not currently living, then I
cannot age, and therefore I will not turn 28 this year.
The truth of A requires the truth of B, and this is the very
definition of the concept of entailment. 
32

By the same token, entailment also means that if B is

false, then A is also false. If it is in fact the case that I am
currently dead, then A must be false, because then I
cannot reach the age of 28. Again, then, entailment is
present in the relationship between A and B. 

The basic rule for entailment has been effectively

captured by the above example. If two sentences X and
Y are related by entailment, then this means that if X is
true, then Y must also be true—or conversely, that if Y is
false, then X must also be false.

Entailment - Relationship to linguistics

The concept of entailment belongs to a branch of

linguistics known as pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study
of how language is actually used in real, living, social
situations. This is why talking about entailment can get a
little philosophical, sometimes: entailment gets to
something close to the core of the logical structure of
language itself. If the concept of entailment did not
work, then a lot of what people say to each other might
turn into gibberish, since the logical structure of
language would no longer hold in a meaningful way. This
is why the concept of entailment may be of interest not
just to linguists but also to analytical philosophers as
well.

Anomaly
Sentences result in ANOMALY when they are built from
parts that are
incompatible with each other semantically.

Examples:

a. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

b. The square root of Milly’s desk drinks humanity.
c. Being a theorem frightens consternation.
d. The rock thinks it’s too good to hold the door
open.
33

Anomaly is distinguished from contradiction.

In contradictory sentences, each constituent clause is
semantically
unproblematic, and we can determine whether it is true
or not. It’s just that
putting the clauses together in a single sentence results
in a contradiction.
But in anomalous sentences, it is impossible to
determine whether it is true
or not, because it is impossible to imagine a situation
that would make it true
or not.

One way in which the study of basic conceptual meaning

might be helpful would be as
a means of accounting for the “oddness” we experience
when we read sentences such
as the following:
The hamburger ate the boy.
The table listens to the radio.
The horse is reading the newspaper.
We should first note that the oddness of these
sentences does not derive from their
syntactic structure. According to the basic syntactic rules
for forming English sentences , we have well-formed
structures.

NP V NP
The hamburger ate the boy
113
This sentence is syntactically good, but semantically odd.
Since the sentence The boy
ate the hamburger is perfectly acceptable, we may be
able to identify the source of the
problem. The components of the conceptual meaning of
the noun hamburger must be
significantly different from those of the noun boy,
thereby preventing one, and not the
34

other, from being used as the subject of the verb ate.

The kind of noun that can be the
subject of the verb ate must denote an entity that is
capable of “eating.” The noun
hamburger does not have this property and the noun
boy does.
We can make this observation more generally applicable
by trying to determine the
crucial element or feature of meaning that any noun
must have in order to be used as
the subject of the verb ate. Such an element may be as
general as “animate being.”
We can then use this idea to describe part of the
meaning of words as either having
(+) or not having (-) that particular feature. So, the
feature that the noun boy has is
“+animate” (= denotes an animate being) and the
feature that the noun hamburger
has is “-animate” (= does not denote an animate being).