SEMANTICS
Chapter 10
Ms. Abrar Mujaddidi
What is semantics
?
Semantics is the study of the
conventional meaning conveyed by the
use of words, phrases and sentences of
a language.
Conceptual and associative meaning
Words have conceptual and associative meanings.
In semantics, we deal with conceptual meaning, NOT associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning: covers those basic
components of a meaning conveyed by the literal use of a word.
Associative meaning: covers associative connotations related to a word. These
associations differ from a person to another.
cont ,.
e.g.
Conceptual meaning:
Needle = thin, sharp, steel, instrument
Low-calorie = producing a small amount of heat or energy
Associative meaning:
Needle = pain, illness, blood, drugs, thread, knitting, hard to find.
Low calorie = healthy
Semantic features
Consider the following examples:
The hamburger ate the boy The table listens to the radio
The horse is reading the newspaper
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
cont ,.
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.
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, but the noun boy does.
cont ,.
We must find a way to determine which noun would be sufficient to serve as a subject for the verb ate.
We use what we call semantic features:
boy [+animate]
hamburger [-animate]
Semantic features can be used as basic elements involved in differentiating a word in a language from every other word.
Refer to pg. 101
Semantic roles
Instead of thinking of words as “containers” of meaning, we can look at the “roles” they play.
Noun phrases describe the roles of entities, such as people & things, involved in the action.
We can identify a small number of semantic roles (thematic roles) for these noun phrases.
cont ,.
Semantic roles:
1. Agent and theme.
2. Instrument and experiencer.
3. Location, source, and goal.
Agent and theme
Agent:
-the entity that performs the action
- typically human, but can be non-human
Theme:
- the entity that is involved or affected by the action
- typically non-human, but can be human
- Also, the theme is the entity that is simply being described.
Instrument and experiencer
If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, that other entity fills the role of instrument.
The boy cut the rope with an old razor.
He drew the picture with a pencil
cont
,.
When a NP is used to represent an entity as the person who has a feeling, perception or
state, it fills the role of experiencer.
WHY IS THAT?
If we see, know or enjoy something, we are not really performing an action (so, we are not
agents).
Location, source, and goal
Location:
other semantic roles represent where an entity is e.g. on the table
where an entity moves from is the source
and where it moves to is the goal.
e.g. We travelled from London to New York
Lexical relations
Lexical relations characterize words in terms of their relations with other words.
Lexical relations are:
1. synonomy 2. antonymy 3. hyponymy 4. Prototypes
5. homophones and hymonyms 6. polysemy
Synonymy
Synonyms are two or more words with very closely related meanings.
They can often, though not always, be substituted for each other in sentences.
e.g.
Answer and replyAntonymy
Antonyms are two forms with opposite meanings.
Antonyms are:
1. gradable
2. non-gradable
Hyponymy
Hyponymy is when the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another.
E.g.
animal/dog, dog/poodle, vegetable/carrot, flower/rose.
The concept of „inclusion‟ involved in this relationship is the idea that if an object is a rose, then it is necessarily a flower
rose is a hyponym of flower.
subordinate superordinate
Prototypes
A prototype is a word that has the “The characteristic instance” of a
category.
e.g. a canary is a prototypical bird, not a
penguin or an ostrich.
Homophones and homonyms
When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation, they are described as homophones
E.g.
Bare/bear, meat/meet, flour/flower, pail/pale
We use the term homonyms when one form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings.
E.g. :
Bank (of a river) bank (financial institution)
Polysymy
Two words or more with the same form and related meanings.
Polysemy can be defined as one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings that are all
related by extension.
E.g.:
Head= the object on top of your body
Head= the person at the top of a company or department.
Mytonymy
A container-contents relation
Bottle/water e.g. He drank the whole bottle.
Can/juice
A whole-part relation
Car/wheels House/roof
Representative-symbol relation
King/crown
The President/ the White House The White House has announced..
Collocation
Which words tend to occur with other words.
hammer/ nail table/ chair butter/ bread needle/ thread salt/ pepper
Break/ rule, break/promise, break/ heart
