Semantics and Pragmatics Dr. Nesreen I. Nawwab Mrs. Sarah Al Mousa

1436-1437 2016

Second Semester Lecture Three

Introductory Remark:

In this lecture we will discuss the idea that we can state the meaning of words in terms of their association with other words.

Many of the basic ideas in today’s lecture derive from de Saussure’s notion of value. He pointed out that a knight on a chess board is a knight not because of any inherent quality, but because of what it can do in relation to other pieces on the board. He stressed this relational aspect of language, saying that there were ‘only differences and no positive terms’, e.g.

Sheep and mutton

Dread and fear

Modern French mouton can have the same signification as English sheep but not the same value, and this for several reasons, particularly because in speaking of a piece of meat ready to be served on the table, English uses mutton and not sheep. The difference in value between sheep and mouton is due to the fact that sheep has beside it a second term while the French word does not.

the content of a sign in linguistics is ultimately determined and delimited not by its internal content, but by what surrounds it: the synonyms “to dread”), (“to fear”), and (“to be afraid”) have their particular values because they exist in opposition to one another. If two of the terms disappeared, then the remaining sign would take on their roles

De Saussure also made the distinction between PARADIGMATIC

and SYNTAGMATIC relations.

Paradigmatic relations are those into which a linguistic unit enters through being contrasted or substitutable, in a particular environment, with other similar units. The examples we have been considering are all of a paradigmatic kind. (psycholinguistic implication in storing words in the mind “priming tasks”).

Syntagmatic relations are those that a unit contracts by virtue of its co-occurrence with similar units. Thus, in a red door and a green door, red and green are in a paradigmatic relation to each other, while each is in a syntagmatic relation with door. (psycholinguistic implication in storing words in the mind “priming tasks” & child language acquisition).

In the discussion of semantic fields in this section we are concerned with paradigmatic relations.

The most famous example of field theory is that of Trier (1934) who compared the field of the ‘intellectual’ aspect of the German of around 1200 (courtly and non-courtly) with that of around 1300 (religious, knowledge, art). He compared a single language at two different periods.

Courtly Knowledge

Non-courtly

Religious Knowledge

Religious

Art

We can also compare two languages to see the way in which they divide up a particular field.

Examples

Color Terms

In Mexican language there are six words for ‘noise’.

In Maya there are three words for ‘searching’.

In Shilluk (Africa) there are three words for ‘break’. (See page 69 in Palmer).

In all these words we have a list of words referring to items of a particular class dividing up a semantic field.

In almost all cases the words are:

1. Incompatible, i.e. one cannot replace the other. The incompatibility of terms within a linguistic field is often clearly indicated in language, I saw her on Sunday, Bill púnched Mary.

2. We can recognize terms that seem to be mixtures, e.g. orange-red. By introducing such terms we increase the words within the field and divide it up more finely.

3. Generally, too, the items in the field are ‘unordered’; that is there is no natural way of arranging them in any kind of order. Exceptions to this are days of the week, months of the year, measurements, and numerals. ) To what extent is this true? Words referring to anger might be ordered according to degree of anger, Arabic and English)

• Colors are discussed more in this section because they raise some interesting general problems in semantics.

• The main problem is that there is no ordering of the colors reflected in the language like days of the week.

To explain this we need to look at the physical characteristics of colors. Color is accounted for in terms of three variables:

1. HUE, which can be measured in wave-lengths and is seen in the spectrum

2. Luminosity, or brightness

3. Saturation, which is the degree of freedom from white, e.g. pink differs from red in that it has low saturation.

• We probably think of color mainly as hue, but this may not always be true.

• For example, in literature, Homer in the Odyssey referred to the sea as ‘wine-colored’, which is very odd if we think of its hue, but completely understandable if we think of its luminosity and saturation, which are very similar to those of a deep red wine.

Further, there isn't always a close relation between these physical features and the color system of a particular language.

For example, in a language of the Philippines, Hanunoo, there are four basic colour terms:

1. Black and white: translate into dark and light.

2. Red and green: translate into that all living things are green and bamboo shoot is light brown.

3. Black and red versus white and green: translate into deep colors versus weaker colors.

It is clear that the color system is not solely based upon the physical features of color, but is partly determined by the cultural needs.

• Finally, some of color usages are rather specialized and a matter of particular collocations, e.g. white coffee versus black coffee.

• We might conclude this point of view that different languages deal with

the field of color in radically different ways.

• An opposite view is presented by Berlin and Key (1969) on the basis of investigation into 98 languages. They claim that there is a universal inventory of only 11 color categories, from which all languages derive 11 or fewer basic color terms. English has 11: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.

• They also claim that there is a partial ordering of these categories, so that it can be predicted that, if a language has a certain color term, it will have certain other ones (the ones to the right):

• It is said that children acquire color terms in the same order. (Psycholinguistic research project)

If one language has only two or three color terms, the range of each is likely to be much wider than that language with the total of 11.

Berlin & Key argue that their informants were able to recognize not only the full range of each color term, but also its focus, the most typical example or examples of the colors represented by the term. Thus, in a language with three terms only, ‘red’ will spread over a much wider area than that of red in English, but the foci will be very similar.

In conclusion, Berlin & Key argue that color categorization in languages is not random and that their results argue against any ‘strict relativity hypothesis’ in favor of a ‘weak universalist one’. The notions of focus, of a limited set of basic terms and of their partial ordering are clearly in direct conflict with any view that says that color is categorized arbitrarily in different languages.

Color terminology is interesting and important in semantics because it is one of very few areas in which it is possible to compare a linguistic system with a system that can be analyzed in objective (physical) terms.

Another area in which it is possible to compare the linguistic system with some kind of objective ‘reality’ is that of kinship.

They raise the issue of the universality of semantic categories.

Introductory remark:

Field Theory is essentially concerned with paradigmatic relations. Also important are the syntagmatic relations, between, e.g. bite and teeth, bark and dog, blond and hair.

• Firth (1951) argued that ‘you shall know a word by the company it keeps’. For Firth, this keeping company, which he called COLLOCATION, was part of the meaning of a word.

• Meaning is to be found in the context of situation, i.e. by looking at the linguistic context of words we can often distinguish between different meanings:

Sat in a chair The baby’s high chair

the chair of philosophy Has accepted a university chair

The chirman of the meeting Will chair the meeting

Condemned to the chair The electric chair

• Collocation is not a matter of association of ideas. Although milk is white, we should not often say white milk, although white paint is common.

Although collocation is very largely determined by meaning, it is sometimes idiosyncratic and cannot easily be predicted in terms of meaning of the associated words.

Blond hair, rancid bacon, rancid butter, addled eggs, sour milk, but not rotten or bad.

Flock of sheep, herd of cows, school of whales, pride of lions, dog/bark, cat/mew, sheep/bleat, horse/neigh, etc.

Pretty child normally refer to females while handsome neighbor would normally refer to males.

• Words may have more specific meanings in particular collocations, e.g. we can speak of abnormal or exceptional weather if we have a heat wave in November, but an exceptional child is not an abnormal child.

One can, with varying degrees of plausibility, provide semantic explanation for even the more restricted collocations, by assigning very particular meanings to individual words, e.g.

1. rancid is to be defined in terms of the very specific, unpleasant, taste associated with butter and bacon that is ‘off’,

2. pretty describes only a feminine kind of beauty,

3. white coffee, white wine, white people suggest that white means ‘with the lightest of the normal color associated with the entity’.

• This should not, however, lead us to conclude that all these restricted collocations can be accounted for semantically, e.g. The only difference between herd and flock is that one is used with cows and the other with sheep.

• Finally, there are borderline cases. It might be thought that rancid may be used with animal products of a certain type-perhaps butter and bacon have something in common. But why not rancid chees or rancid milk.