LING1000

Introduction to Language
Week 8
Semantics & Pragmatics

O. Lam
osclam@hku.hk
Nov. 2, 2022.
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Today’s Plan
• Semantics
• Sense & reference
• Lexical (sense) relations

• Pragmatics
• Deixis
• Anaphora
• Presupposition
• Direct & indirect speech acts

• Readings for today’s class:

• Yule (2020)
• Ch. 9 ‘Semantics’ (p.134-140)
• Ch. 10 ‘Pragmatics’

• Reading for next class:

• Yule (2020)
• Ch. 12 ‘Language and the brain’
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Types of meaning
• Three different types of meaning:
1. word meaning
2. sentence meaning
• not dependent on context
3. utterance meaning (speaker meaning)
• may differ from sentence meaning depending on the context
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Sense and reference

(1) Kroeger (2018)
a. When Jones said that he was meeting “a close friend” for dinner, he meant his lawyer.
b. Salamat means ‘thank you’ in Tagalog.
c. Usufruct means ‘the right of one individual to use and enjoy the property of another.’

• Sense: the meaning of a word

• A word may have more than one sense.
(2) bank1, bank2

• Homonyms
• Two words have the same form, but different meanings

• Reference: language allows speakers to talk about, i.e. refer to, things in the world
(3) Kroeger (2018:2)
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Reference
• Different ways to refer to things in the world
• Referring expressions
• An expression (most commonly an NP) is used to refer a particular individual or a
particular set of things
(4) John, Mary, Mr. Lee, the books, the students, the dog

• fixed reference
(5) Dawson & Phelan (2016)
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Reference
• Deictic elements
• The reference of a deitic element depends on the context.
(6) a. personal pronouns, e.g. I, you, she, they etc.
b. deitic pronouns, e.g. this, those, here etc.
c. reflexive pronouns, e.g. himself, ourselves etc.

(7) a. He left.
b. John stayed briefly, and then he left.
c. Mary saw herself in the mirror.

• Anaphor: an NP whose reference is obtained from the reference of another

NP (antecedent) in previous discourse

• Presupposition
• the shared hearer-speaker knowledge
• may or may not be linguistically evoked
• Information may come from the context.
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The mental lexicon

• Words and word meanings are stored in the mental lexicon.
• the dictionary in our mind; the mental store of words

(8) dog
• noun
• forms/ shapes:
• written form: dog
• spoken form: / dɒg /
• meaning: DOG

(9) poodle
• noun
• forms/ shapes:
• written form: poodle
• spoken form: / ‘pu:d(ə)l /
• meaning: POODLE
• special information:
• It’s a kind of dog.
• (Source of picture: http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/toy-poodle_532106.htm)

• A meaning is associated with a spoken form.

• the word dog and the concept DOG
• Some combinations of letters are pronounceable but have no meaning, e.g. thit and bliff
(Jackendoff 2012:43).
• Only a pronounceable form with a meaning attached to it is a meaningful word.
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Word meanings are not simply visual images.

• The meaning of dog (adapted from Jackendoff (2012:52))
(a) (b) (c)

(Source of pictures:
(a) http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/toy-poodle_532106.htm
(b) http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/german-shepherd-dog_636711.htm
(c) http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/ -canidae-wolf-canis-hunter-lupus-predator_667525.htm)

• And, the meaning of beauty?

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What is a bird?

sparrow pigeon owl

(Source of pictures:
Sparrow: http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/sparrow--gorrion_662617.htm
Pigeon: http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/bird-macro-pigeon-feather-nature-birds-walk-grey_667395.htm
Owl: http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/staring-back_634863.htm)
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What is a bird?

penguin chicken

(Source of pictures:
Penguin: http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/humbioldt-penguin_613114.htm
Chicken: http://www.freepik.com/free-photo/just-a-hen_628304.htm)
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Prototypes
• What’s the meaning of bird?
• Most likely, it’s not a specific image of any particular kind of bird that
comes to mind.
• Prototypes (Rosch 1973, 1975, among others; in Saeed 1997)
• The more/most representative, typical members of a category
• The prototype may not be a fixed image of any particular kind of bird, but may be
an abstract list of characteristic features.
• When we decide whether something is or isn’t a bird, we compare the features of
the object that we see to these features.
• Sparrow, pigeon, owl vs. penguin, bird

Less Less
typical typical
birds Typical birds
birds
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Are word meanings clear-cut?

• Some words are extremely difficult to define in terms of other
words (if it’s possible at all!).
• colour terms
• What’s the meaning of blue?

• Where is the boundary between blue and green?

• bluish green & greenish blue -> Same? Different?

• How bald is bald? (Jackendoff 2012:56)

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Lexical (sense) relations

(see Kroeger 2018 for a detailed discussion)
• (Some) word meanings are connected.
(10) a. The lion killed the zebra. => The zebra died.
b. ?The lion killed the zebra, but the zebra survived.

• There is a relation between the words kill and die.

• Other relations:
• Homonymy
• Homonyms are words that have the same form, but different meanings.
• Homophones: words with the same spoken form, but different meanings.
(11) two and too
• Homographs: words with the same written form, but different meanings.
(12) a. bow (and arrow) (N)
b. to bow (V)

• Synomymy (see Kroeger 2018 for a more detailed discussion)

• Synonyms have the same meaning.
(13) Kroeger (2018)
a. Susan lives in a big/large house.
b. Susan lives with her big/large sister.

• Two words are seldom (if ever) perfectly synonymous.

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Lexical (sense) relations

• Antonymy
• Antonyms have ‘opposite’ meanings.
• Types:
• Complementary antonyms
• An entity is either X or Y, but not both.
(14) alive, dead

• Gradable/scalar antonyms
• Words that mark opposite ends of a scale.
(15) hot, cold

• Differences
• Gradable antonyms mark ends of a scale, and there are often intermediate points on
the scale.
(16) hot, warm, cold
• Gradable antonyms have comparative forms.
(17) a. hotter, colder
b. ??deader
• One of the gradable antonyms is often considered to be the ‘default’.
(18) a. How old are you?
b. ??How young are you?
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Lexical (sense) relations

• Hyponymy
• generic-specific relationships
• Hypernym: the more general member
• Hyponym: the more specific member
• Taxonomic sisters: words that have the same hypernym
(19)

• Taxonomy
• X is a taxonym of Y if X is a kind/type of Y.
(20) a. A poodle is a kind of dog.
b. Not all dogs are poodles.
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Word & sentence meanings

• The meaning of a word/sentence is built by adding together the
meanings of its parts.
• word: dogs
dog -s
the concept DOG more than 1

• sentences:
(21) The lion killed the zebra.
(22) The zebra killed the lion.
• Same words, different word orders -> different meanings

• exceptions: idioms, words like white-collar

(23) to kick the bucket
• verb phrase
• meaning: DIE
• special information:
• This is special phrase with a fixed meaning.
• There is no kicking involved, and a bucket is not required.
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Sentence meaning & utterance meaning

• Utterance
• An utterance is ‘a speech event by a particular speaker in a
specific context’ (Kroeger 2018:5).
• Sentence meaning = semantic content of sentence
• Utterance meaning = semantic content of sentence + any other
pragmatic meaning

(24) I have to get a book from the library.

(25) S1: Do you want to have lunch together after this class?
S2: I have to get a book from the library.

• Speech acts
• A speaker performs a speech act when s/he makes an utterance.
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Searle’s (1976) Speech Acts

• Representatives/ assertatives
• telling people how things are
• can be true or false
(26) This is an interesting book.

• Directives
• trying to get hearers to do things
(27) Can you open the door?
(28) Go away!

• Commissives
• committing the speaker to do things in the future
(29) We will have a party next week.
(30) I promise to give it back to you.

• Expressives
• Expressing feelings and emotions about things
(31) We thank Prof. Smith for giving a wonderful talk.

• Declarations
• Bringing about immediate changes in the world
(32) I now pronounce you husband and wife.
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Speech acts
• The three most basic types of communicative functions:
• Statements
• Questions
• Commands

• Linguistic form and function

Form Properties of the form Function

(33) The book is in the
library.

(34) Where is the book?

(35) Give me the book!

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Speech acts
• Direct speech acts
• Speaker performs the intended speech act by making use of the
literal meaning of the form.
• Illocutionary force: speaker’s intention
(36) Can you drive?

• Indirect speech acts

• Speaker performs the intended speech act by using a form that is
not, by default, associated with that function.
(37) Can you open the door?
(38) Can I borrow your book?
(39) I didn’t bring my book.
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Face
• Indirect speech acts are often performed to save one’s
face.
• Face: a person’s ‘public self-image’ (Yule 2006:119)

• Face-saving acts and face-threatening acts

(39) a. Can I help you?
b. You don’t know your way around here.
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References
Dawson, Hope C. & Michael Phelan (eds). 2016. Language files: Materials for an
introduction to language, 12 ed. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 2012. A user’s guide to thought and meaning. Oxford: OUP.
Kroeger, Paul R. 2018. Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and
pragmatics (Textbooks in Language Sciences 5). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Rosch, Eleanor. 1973. Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 4:328-50.
Rosch, Eleanor. 1975. Cognitive reference points. Cognitive Psychology, 7:532-47.
Saeed, John I. 1997. Semantics. Oxford: Blackwells.
Searle, John. 1976. The classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society.
5(1):1-24.
Yule, George. 2006. A study of language. Cambridge: CUP.