Semantics, part 2

April 13, 2009

The Last Details• For starters: a word association Quick Write.

• Semantics/pragmatics homework is due on Wednesday.

• any questions?

• We’re still working on grading the syntax homework;

• You will (hopefully) have it back by Wednesday.

• Future plans:

• Wednesday - wrap up semantics

• Friday - review session (for whoever wants one)

• Also: office hours from 12 to 1 tomorrow.

Compositional Recap• Last time, I introduced the correspondence theory of

truth:

1. Propositions can be true or false.

2. Truth is the correspondence of propositions to facts.

• A valid objection: subjective vs. objective truth.

• Subjective: “It’s warm outside.”

• Objective “fact”: “The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup last year.”

• Possible fix: subjective truths may be true from only one person’s perspective;

• Objective truths are true from all possible perspectives.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis• In the early twentieth century, the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the following (controversial) hypothesis:

• A person’s conception of reality is dependent upon the language they speak.

• Edward Sapir (1929):

“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society…we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.”

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis• Benjamin Whorf (1956):

“The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely the reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade…We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.”

• Intriguing thoughts, but…

• Hard to prove in reality.

• One interesting piece of evidence:

• Differences in the way that languages organize the color spectrum.

Reference: Basic Color Terms

purple blue green yellow orange red

Color names for the spectrum of light in English

Note:

Hungarian distinguishes between piros “light red” and voros “dark red“

Russian distinguishes between sinij “dark blue” and goluboj “light blue”

Reference: Color Terms

cipswuka citema cicena cipswuka

Color names for the spectrum of light in Shona

(spoken in Zimbabwe)

Note: cipswuka applies to “orange”, “red” and “purple”

Reference: Color Terms

hui ziza

Color names for the spectrum of light in Bassa

(spoken in the Ivory Coast)

Patterns of Color Terms• Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1969) catalogued the color terms of 98 different languages.

• They presented speakers of a language with an array of 329 color chips.

• Task:

• for each color word in that language, circle all the chips that it applies to

• Also: circle the chip that is the best example of that color

Color Matching Results• Every language has at least two basic color terms

• basically: dark (“black”) and light (“white”)

• Bassa is a two-color language

• Languages with three color terms add red

• Languages with four color terms add green or yellow

• Fifth color term: either green or yellow

• Sixth color term: blue

• Seventh color term: brown

• The rest: purple, pink, orange or gray

Big Picture• Different languages divvy up the color spectrum in different ways;

• but there are still language-universal patterns in the types of color schemes available to languages.

• As linguists, we want to know what competent speakers of a language need to know in order to produce meaningful utterances in that language.

• = the semantic features of a language

• There are language-specific and language-universal semantic features.

• As in syntax, whatever is language-universal may be attributed to our innate mental endowment for both language and thought.

Moving On• There are several different ways to study meaning in

language:

1. Pragmatics

The meaningful use of linguistic expressions in conversation and discourse.

2. Compositional Semantics

How the meaning of phrases and sentences is built up from the meanings of individual words.

3. Lexical Semantics

The meaning of individual words, and how they’re related to one another.

Lexical Semantics• Here are two basic meaning relationships that words

can have with one another:

1. Synonymy

• Two words have the same meaning

• couch/sofa, groundhog/woodchuck, hide/conceal

• = real-world extensions are identical

2. Hyponymy

• one word’s extension is a subset of another word’s extension

• poodle/dog, laptop/computer, gas giants/planets

Synonym Schematic

Fido Marmaduke Garfield

Rex

Spot Snoopy

Fifi Mr. Meowser

Lassie

Tinkerbell The Death Star

is a dogis a canine

canines and dogs are synonyms

Hyponym Schematic

Fido Marmaduke Garfield

Rex

Spot Snoopy

Fifi Mr. Meowser

Lassie

Tinkerbell The Death Star

dogspoodles

poodle is a hyponym (subset) of dog

Another One• Antonymy: when words that mean the “opposite” of each other

• Complementary antonyms:

• Everything in the world is one or the other

• unmarried/married, present/absent, visible/invisible

• Relational antonyms:

• Reflect a symmetrical connection between each other

• give/receive, buy/sell, teacher/pupil

• employer/employee, adviser/advisee

• Scalar antonyms: words form two ends of a scale

• hot/cold, happy/sad, big/small, fast/slow

Homonyms/Homophones• Homonyms/Homophones are words with:

• same pronunciation

• unrelated meanings

• from Greek: /homo-/ “same” + /onyma/ “name”

• Examples:

• trunk (of an elephant), trunk (chest), trunk (of a tree)

• also: bear, bare

• Homonyms can create ambiguity:

• We saw her duck.

Polysemy• Polysemy is when one word has several different, but related meanings.

• From Greek: /poly-/ “many” + /sema/ “signal”

• Examples:

• Mouth of a river ~ mouth of an animal

• A baseball diamond ~ a geometric diamond ~ a diamond stone

Intersection• Compositional semantics, continued...

• We have discussed how the referents of nouns and the extensions of predicates get put together to form a meaningful proposition.

• Now let’s consider adjectives and nouns in noun phrases.

• Simplest case: pure intersection

• black dogs =

• the set of all dogs

intersected with

• the set of all black things

Pure Intersection Schematic

Marmaduke

Odie Charcoal

Lassie Spot

Rex Darth Vader

Spuds

Oil

dogsblack dogs

black things

Pure Intersection of Music Snobbery

Semantic Features• Idea: the meaning of a word can be precisely determined by the pure intersection of predicates of which it is a hyponym (subset).

• Example: “square”

[TWO-DIMENSIONAL, FOUR-SIDED, EQUAL-SIDED]

• Example: “bachelor”

[HUMAN, MALE, UNMARRIED]

• The predicate sets form a word’s semantic features

• “hen” and “mare” share the feature [FEMALE]

• “bachelor” and “woman” share the feature [HUMAN]

Verb Features• The same semantic feature can be expressed by a variety of different verbs.

• Example: the feature [GO]

• reflects a change in position

• fly, walk, roll, stumble, run, crawl, etc.

• More subtle examples of [GO]:

• give: “John gave Mary an engagement ring.”

John Mary

ring

• “The boy threw the ball over the fence.”

A Syntax Flashback• Remember that, in syntax, we learned that different verbs require specific complement structures.

• For instance, transitive verbs require an object NP in their verb phrases.

I devoured the sandwich.

I met the Professor.

• Similarly, ditransitive verbs require two objects in their verb phrases.

The dog trainer sold me a chew toy.

Larry gave Shelly the textbook.

Syntax/Semantics• There are sub-features of [GO], which are reflected in constraints on verb complements in English.

• [BALLISTIC]: a one-time [GO] V’ V NP NP

• [SUSTAINED]: a continuous [GO] *V’ V NP NP

• Ballistic Verbs Sustained Verbs

throw the boy a ball *push the boy a ball

toss the boy a ball *pull the boy a ball

kick the boy a ball *lift the boy a ball

fling the boy a ball *drag the boy a ball

Role-playing• The objects of ditransitive verbs can be expressed in two different syntactic ways:

Larry gave Shelly the textbook. (NP NP)

Larry gave the textbook to Shelly. (NP PP)

• Despite the syntactic differences, each noun plays the same role in both sentences:

Larry: Agent (the entity performing the action)

Textbook: Theme (thing being acted upon)

Shelly: Recipient (being coming into possession of something)

Thematic Roles• Verbs have semantic requirements.

• For a sentence to make sense, it has to include nouns which can play the roles required by the verb.

• give: Agent; Theme; Recipient

Larry gave Shelly the textbook.

Larry gave the textbook to Shelly.

Shelly was given the textbook by Larry.

!Anger gave Shelly the textbook.

Other Thematic Roles• Experiencer

• = animate being that has a perceptual or mental experience.

• Ex: Susan heard the music.

• Source

• = the origin of a change.

• Ex: Jan arrived from Detroit.

• Instrument

• = the means used to accomplish an action (not agent)

• Ex: The hammer cracked the window.

Other Thematic Roles• Goal

• = the end point of a change in location or possession.

• Ex: Chris hitchhiked to Alaska.

• Location

• = the place where an action occurs.

• Ex: Neil Young played a show in Winnipeg.

Cross-language Data• Consider the sentence: I like the book.

“I” is the experiencer in this sentence.

It is also the subject of the sentence.

• Other languages express this notion with different syntax:

German: Das Buch gefällt mir.

French: Le livre me plaît.

Spanish: El libro me gusta.

• In all of these languages, the speaker is the semantic experiencer of “liking” the book...

• But is the syntactic object of the sentence.

By the way• Particular verbs can have highly specific thematic restrictions.

• E.g.: the Experiencer of “sleep” has to be animate.

!Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• The object of “frighten” has to have a mind.

Sincerity may frighten the boy.

!The boy may frighten sincerity.

• Other examples:

Time elapsed. !John elapsed.

It is snowing. !The dog is snowing.

Verb Features• Another verb feature: [CAUSE]

• Contrast:

The water boiled. Laura boiled the water.

The door opened. The wind opened the door.

The window broke. Larry broke the window.

• When these verbs are transitive, they have this semantic structure:

X CAUSED Y to Z

Laura CAUSED the water to boil.

Causatives• In some languages, the [CAUSE] feature is realized morphologically.

• Songhay (spoken in Burkina Faso):

Feneter di ba.

window the broke

“The window broke.”

Ali ba ndi feneter di.

Ali broke [CAUSE] window the

“Ali broke the window.”