semantic and pragmatics

Semantics:

What is semantics?

        It is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. Our focus in semantic analysis is what words conventionally mean not what a speaker might want the words to mean on a particular occasion.

       In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse (termed texts).

The basic area of study is the meaning of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units and compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, paronyms.

 A key concern is how meaning attaches to larger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units of meaning.

Traditionally, semantics has included the study of sense and denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles^,  discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax.

componential theory

 Componential analysis are concerned with breaking the down the meaning or sense of a word into its atomic components. The view that all lexical items can be analyzed using a finite set of components (Semantic Features).

 One of the commonest examples used by linguists is the set of features which are said to compose the terms woman, bachelor, spinster, wife:

Semantic features:

A semantic feature is a notational method which can be used to express the existence or non-existence of pre-established semantic properties by using plus and minus signs.

Woman	[+Female]	[+Adult]	[+Human]
Bachelor	[+Male]	[+Adult]	[+Human]	[+Unmarried]
Spinster	[+Female]	[+Adult]	[+Human]	[+Unmarried]
Wife	[+Female]	[+Adult]	[+Human]	[+Married]

1.     The hamburger ate the man.

2.     My cat studies linguistics.

3.     A table was listening to some music.

           We can notice from the above examples that there is oddness but why? That oddness doesn't come from their syntactic structure, as they are syntactically good but semantically odd. The source of the oddness we experience my relate to the conceptual meaning of the noun "hamburger" in the first example which differ significantly from those of the noun "man" especially if they are used as subjects of the verb "ate", as it is known the subjects of such verb must denote entities which are capable of eating which aren't in the noun "hamburger" but exist in the noun "man".

Semantic roles:

          In a number of theories of linguistics, thematic relations is a term used to express the role that a noun phrase plays with respect to the action or state described by a sentence's verb. For example, in the sentence "The boy kicked the ball", the boy is the doer of the kicking, so he is an agent; the ball is the item that is kicked, so it is a patient. We should look at the "roles" that the words fulfill within the situation described by a sentence not to look at the words as if they are "containers" of meaning. So in that example "The boy kicked the ball",

         The boy with the role taken by him technically known as the agent (deliberately performs the action). Although agents are typically human, they may be non-human forces, machines, or creatures.

         Another role was taken by the ball as it is involved or affected by the action, technically known as the theme (undergoes the action but does not change its state).

  If the agent uses another entity in performing the action, it will fill the role of instrument like the "pen" in writing, or the spoon in eating.

      Other roles can be found in a noun phrase:

     Experiencer: the entity that receives sensory or emotional input (Jack heard that noise), here "Jack" is the experience, and "that noise" is the theme.

     Another role is called Location: where the action occurs, "on the table, in the room".

   Goal: where an entity moves to, but where it is moved from is called the source.

Cooperative Principle:

        It is a term derived from the philosopher H. P. Grice. Grice's principle assumes that people cooperate in the process of communication in order to reduce misunderstanding. The principle itself states "Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged" 

          In order to comply with his principle speakers need to follow a number of sub principles, called by Grice maxims. These fall into four categories:

1-    Maxim of Quantity:

-         Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose.

-         Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

2-    Maxim of Relation:

-         Be relevant.

3-    Maxim of Manner: be perspicuous, more specifically:

-         Avoid obscurity.                    – Avoid ambiguity.

-         Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)        - Be orderly.

4-    Maxim of Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true, more specifically

-         Do not say what you believe to be false.

-         Do not say that for which you lake evidence.

The maxims are best regarded not as rules but as implicit principles on which successful communication is built. As such, they can be departed from two main ways. Speakers can choose either to flout or to violate them.

  Violating a maxim involves some elements of communication failure: providing too little, or too much, detail, being irrelevant, or too vague.

     Floutings, however, are apparent rather than real violations. They enable us to comply with the maxims indirectly rather than directly. Novelists flout the maxim of manner when they disrupt the story by using flashbacks or digressions, but we trust that the narrative will eventually come together. If it doesn't, we would conclude that the maxim had been violated.

            The cooperative principle has been refined in two main ways. First, by the addition of the politeness principle which was suggested by G. Leech as a way of explaining why people feel the need to be indirect in conveying what they mean. The politeness principle enjoins people to be tactful and polite unless here is a specific reason not to be and this leads to what is called "white lies". These ostensibly break he maxim of quality but are felt by most people to be different from other lies in that they are intended to be cooperative rather than to mislead.

                  

Lexical relations:

        Lexical semantics examines relationships among word meanings. It is the study of how the lexicon is organized and how the lexical meanings of lexical items are interrelated, and its principle goal is to build a model for the structure of the lexicon by categorizing the types of relationships between words. We can define any word through its relations with others if you are asked about the meaning of the word "conceal" you may say the same as hide, or the meaning of the word sallow, you will say it's the opposite of deep. So what are those relations? They are (Synonymy, Antonym, Hyponymy, Prototypes, Homonymy, Polysem, Metonymy, and Collocation)

Synonymy:

 Two or more forms with very closely related meanings, they aren't always intersubstitutable in sentences, e.g. broad – wide, hide – conceal, liberty – freedom. The idea of "sameness of meaning" is not necessary total sameness, as some may be appropriate in a sentence but its synonymy would be odd, like the word "answer" in the sentence: Cathy had only one answer correct on the test, its synonymy "reply" would be incorrect here.

Antonym:

     Antonym or oppositeness of meaning has long been recognized as one of the most important semantic relations, it means that two forms with opposite meanings .e.g. quick-slow, big-small, long-short, rich-poor, etc.
Antonyms are divided in to several types-1.gradable antonyms/pairs, 2.nongradable antonyms/complementaries,

    Gradable antonyms can be used in comparative, and the negative of one member of the gradable pair doesn't necessary imply the other, e.g. He isn't young, doesn’t mean that he is old.

Non-gradable antonym on the other hand, can't be used in comparative, (deader or more dead sound strange), also the negative of one implies the other, He isn't dead means that he is alive.

Hyponymy:

        Hyponymy is a relationship between two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other word. Hyponymy is the relationship between each lower term and the higher term (super ordinate).It is sense relation. Hyponymy is defined in terms of the inclusion ofإدراج  the sense of one item in the sense of another. e.g. The sense of animal is included in the sense of lion. Hyponymy is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns. It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon. e.g. the verb cook has many hyponyms, roast, boil, fry, etc…

        In a lexical field, hyponymy may exist at more than one level. A word may have both a hyponym and a super ordinate term.

Prototypes:

It is the word which defines & refers to the whole category, e.g. (canary. Dove, duck, flamingo, parrot, pelican, robin, swallow, and thrush) are all equally co-hyponyms of the super ordinate bird, but are not equally good exemplars of the category "bird". & as the word shirt is the prototype for clothing, we have for furniture the word chair.

homonym

     homonym isجناس, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings .e.g. bank, school, pupil, and mole all of these words have different meanings but accidently come to have exactly the same form.

Polysem:

  If one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings which are all related by extension , e.g. the word "head" it is used to refer to the object on your body, or top of  a glass of beer, on top of a company.

The difference between polysem & homonym is not always clear cut. We can know the polysem or the homonym of words from the dictionary.

Homophony:

 When two or more different written forms have the same pronunciation they are described as homophones, e.g. meet & meat, beer & bare, flour & flower.

Metonym:

        If a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept, as if you heard that the White House announced or Downing Street protested you are not puzzled that the building appear to be talking, as you know it is a metonym الكناية for the president, making sense of such expressions often depends on context, background knowledge and inference.

Collocation: تنْسِيق

It is another aspect of our knowledge of words, we know which words tend to occur with other words, for instance the word hammer; of course, will call in your mind the word nail, and for the word table you have chair.

Pragmatics:

                 In semantics our concern is the meaning of language as a product of the meaning of words, but in Pragmatics our focus changed as we don't concern only what the words mean but what the writer or the speaker intended to convey by uttering those words. The study of intended speaker meaning is called pragmatics. It the study of invisible meaning to know what is the meaning behind the words even if it isn’t said. To understand let's discus this example, consider this advertisement taken from the newspaper and think not only about what the words might mean but also about what the advertiser intended them to mean ( Baby & Toddler Sale) what may come to your mind from the normal context  that this store has gone into business of selling young children but rather that it is advertising clothes for babies, of course the word clothes isn't in the context but this is the message which the writer wants us to understand.

             In the above example we have emphasized the influence of context, there are different kinds of contexts. One kind is best described as linguistic context or known as co-text which means "the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. For instance, we took the word "bank" as homonym, and it has more than one meaning, so how do we know the intended meaning? It's the linguistic context who helps us to know the appropriate meaning, if we heard the word bank accompanied with words like steep or overgrown, we will know the meaning of it which is unlike if we heard it with words like cash or check.

    Another context to know the meaning of the words is called the physical context, if see the word bank on a wall of building in a city, the physical location will influence your interpretation.

           After discussing the context and its types, I want to assure on a point that there are some words cannot be interpreted or understood unless especially the physical context is well-known, for instance, words like, here, there, this, that, now, then, tomorrow, yesterday, as well as pronouns. It's clear that no sentence in English can go without one or more from those words; these words are known as deictic expressions which depend for their interpretation on the immediate physical context in which they were uttered. Thus, we have personal deixis (me, you, him, them) & place deixis (here, there, yonder) & the words which refer to time are called time deixis (now, then, tonight, last week).

          Previously, we discussed deixis and we assumed that the use of words to refer to people and things was a simple matter, however, words themselves don't refer to anything, and people refer. So, we have to define reference as an act by which a speaker or writer uses language to enable a listener or reader to identify something. It's not as simple as words have a direct relationship to those things, as we may not know someone's name but we can refer to him. E.g. in a restaurant one waiter can ask where is the fresh salad sitting? And the other replies and says; he is sitting by the door. Also you can ask your classmate where your Chomsky is, and he says it’s on the shelf there. We can notice from those examples that we used things to refer to people and people to refer to things, this process is called inference which means any additional information used by the listener to connect what is said to what must be mean.

        When we establish a referent (Can I borrow your book?) and subsequently refer to the same object (Yeah, it's on the table), we have a particular kind of referential relationship between book an it, where the former (book) is called antecedent, the later (it) is called anaphoric expression. Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already introduced entity. The connection between referent and anaphora may not always be direct, as in the example (I was waiting for the bus, but he just drove by without stopping).

         Unlike the term inference which is used to describe what the listener or reader does, when we talk about an assumption made by the speaker or writer, we usually talk about presupposition, for example when a speaker uses referring expressions like this, he or Shakespeare, in normal circumstances, she is working with an assumption that the hearer knows which referent is intended. Generally, speakers design their linguistic messages on the basis of assumptions about what their hearers already know, these assumptions may be mistaken but indeed they underlie much of what we say in the everyday use of language. If someone asked you, why are you late? There is a presupposition that you are late.