Semantics Session 9_15_11_2021 Word Meaning.pdf
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This document summarizes key concepts from a seminar on semantics and word properties. It discusses how dictionaries provide phonological, grammatical, and semantic information about words. Specifically, it examines how dictionaries represent the different senses of words like "man" and "human" as separate entries. The document also distinguishes between the goals of linguistic semanticists who study word meanings, and encyclopedias which provide factual information. Finally, it notes that the distinction between dictionary definitions and encyclopedic information is blurring, as understanding word meanings involves world knowledge.
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Semantics Session 9_15_11_2021 Word Meaning.pdf
- 1. Department of English Language and Literature Major: English Language and Literature Semantics Session 9 “Semantics and word properties: Word Meaning” Dr. Badriya Al Mamari Academic year 2021/2022
- 2. A dictionary • A dictionary is a central part of the description of any language. A good ordinary household dictionary typically gives (at least) three kinds of information about words: • 1.phonological information about how the word is pronounced, • 2.grammatical (syntactical and morphological) information about its part of speech (e.g. noun, verb) and inflections (e.g. for plural number or past tense), • 3.semantic information about the word’s meaning.
- 4. • A dictionary tells you what words mean. The semanticist dictionary-writer and the ordinary dictionary-writer have quite similar goals, but they differ markedly in their style of approach and the emphasis which they place on their various goals.
- 5. • Man is given two separate senses here (numbered 1 and 4) and human is given three senses (1, 2, and 3).We will treat each sense as a different item, representing them as man1, man4, human1, human2, and human3.
- 6. • The first point to note about all dictionaries is that their definitions are necessarily interconnected.
- 7. • Traditionally, the linguistic semanticist is interested in the meanings of words and not in non-linguistic facts about the world. Linguistic semanticist makes the assumption that non- linguistic facts are not particularly relevant to the study of linguistic meaning (that is, the meanings conveyed by the sense relations of the words within the language itself as opposed to meaning conveyed by information from the context or situation in which the language is used).
- 8. • Sibling is not a word in the everyday English vocabulary, but is a technical term used to refer to someone who is either a brother or a sister. • Parent refers to father and mother! • The meaning of sibling contains no concept of sex. Clearly, the two predicates brother and sister form a natural class. • These are called Theoretical’ or ‘technical’ predicates (session6)
- 9. Dictionary vs Encyclopaedia • A Dictionary describes the senses of predicates. • An Encyclopaedia contains factual information of a variety of types, but generally no information specifically on the meanings of words.
- 10. • The stereotype of a predicate contains, strictly speaking, only encyclopaedic information, although the importance of stereotypes in the use and understanding of words fuzzes the distinction between dictionary and encyclopaedia. (session 8) • From a traditional point of view, the descriptive semanticist is basically interested in that information about words which can give rise to sentences containing them being either analytic (e.g. The cheetah is an animal) or contradictions (e.g. The cheetah is not an animal). Any other information is not strictly semantic but encyclopaedic, at least under the assumption that such a distinction can indeed be made.
- 11. • Many semanticists are coming to the realization that the study of meaning has to include the study of encyclopaedic information in some way along with dictionary information in order to represent more adequately the knowledge a speaker has about the language.
- 12. References: Hurford, J. R., Heasley, B., & Smith, M. B. (2007). Semantics: a coursebook. Cambridge university press. (pp. 141 -151