第5章　语义学

1．Define the following terms briefly.

Key:

·Semantics: Semantics is the branch of linguistics which studies meaning in language. A sentence needs to be well formed both-syntactically and semantically. The sentence “Mary married the Mickey Mouse”, for example, is syntactically well formed but semantically ill formed; for we know that a lady cannot marry the Mickey Mouse. Semantics is concerned with such information.

·Truth-conditional semantics: Knowing the meaning of a sentence is the same as knowing the conditions under which the sentence is true or false. And knowing the meaning of a word or expression is knowing the part that it plays in the truth or falsehood of the sentence containing it. Such an approach to meaning is called truth-conditional theory/semantics.

·Naming theory: The view that the meaning of an expression is what it refers to, or names, is called the naming theory. The word tree, for example, names the object tree in the real world.

·Behaviorist theory: Bloomfield argued that meaning exists in the relation between speech and the practical events that precede and follow it. The meaning of a linguistic form is thus defined as observable behaviors in behaviorism, or behaviorist theory, which clearly draws on psychology.

·Use theory: The semantic theory according to which the meaning of a word is determined by its use in communication and more generally, in social interaction.

·Sense: Sense is the semantic links between linguistic elements within the vocabulary system. It is defined in terms of relationships which hold between the linguistic elements themselves, so it is concerned with intralinguistic relations.

·Reference: Reference or extension deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements (words, sentences, etc.) and the non-linguistic world of the experience, e.g. things, actions, events and qualities.

·Conceptual meaning: Conceptual meaning, also called denotative or cognitive meaning, is the essential and inextricable part of what language is, and is widely regarded as the central factor in verbal communication. It means that the meaning of words may be discussed in terms of what they denote or refer to.

·Connotative meaning: Connotative meaning is the communicative value that a word or a combination of words has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content.

·Semantic field: It is the organization of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relationship to one another. For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt belong to a semantic field whose relevant features include generation, sex, membership of the father’s or mother’s side of the family.

·Lexical gap: The absence of a word in a particular place in a semantic field of a language is called lexical gap. In English we have brother versus sister, son versus daughter, but no separate lexemes for "male" and "female" cousin.

·Componential Analysis: Some linguists claim that all lexical items can be analyzed into a set of semantic features or semantic components which may be universal, and this semantic theory is called Componential Analysis(CA).

·Semantic feature: Semantic feature, which is also called semantic component, is a universal set of components which can be used to describe meaning in each and every language in the world.

·Synonymy: Synonymy refers to the sense relation of “sameness of meaning”.

·Antonymy: Antonymy refers to the sense relation of various kinds of opposing meaning between lexical items, e.g. big/small, alive/dead and father/daughter.

·Hyponymy: The relationship of hyponymy is between the more general term and the more specific instances. The general term is called the superordinate or hyperonym. And the specific instances are hyponyms of the superordinate.

·Meronymy: It is the sense relation between terms which is the part of the other word and also called part/whole relationship. For example, words like second and minute, minute and hour, hour and day, day and week, none of which could be described without reference to the fact that it is a subdivision of another.

·Semantic role: By semantic role we mean such things as who did what to whom, with whom, and for whom. The semantic role of a noun phrase is the role that its referent plays in the action, state or situation described by the sentence.

·Entailment: Entailment is a kind of meaning-dependence between one sentence and another. It is concerned with the meaning of the sentence itself and thus doesn’t depend on the context in which a sentence is used.

·Presupposition: The speaker or writer always assumes that the hearer/reader already knows something of what he is going to say or write and this “something” often becomes the presupposition of a sentence.

2．Explain the semantic ambiguity of the following sentences by providing two or more sentences that paraphrase the multiple meanings. Example: She can’t bear children can mean either She can’t give birth to children or She can’t tolerate children.

(1) He waited by the bank.

(2) Is he really that kind?

(3) We bought her dog biscuits.

(4) He saw that gasoline can explode.

(5) Fifty soldiers shot three wild foxes.

(6) He saw her drawing pencils.

Key: (1) He waited by the bank of a river.

He waited by the bank where people can save or deposit money.

(2) Does he really belong to that kind of man?

Is he really a kind-hearted man as we have imagined?

(3) We brought some biscuits for her dog.

We brought some dog biscuits for her.

(4) The explosion of that gasoline can was seen by him.

He saw the fact that gasoline is able to explode.

(5) Fifty soldiers shot three wild foxes with guns.

Fifty soldiers shot three wild foxes with cameras.

(6) Her drawing pencils were seen by him.

Her drawing pencils were cut off by him with a saw.

3．Two relations involving word meaning are antonymy and synonymy. Which relation is illustrated in each of the pairs of words below?

Key: Antonymy: (2), (4), (5), (8)

Synonymy: (1), (3), (6), (7)

4．What connotations or connotative meanings do you think the following nouns have in English?

charity

iron

mole

snow

street

Key: Charity: social responsibility, kind-heartedness, consciousness

Iron: strong, perseverance, firmness

Mole: stealthiness, blindness(as blind as a mole)

Snow: white, pure, beautiful

Street: broad, straight, plain

5．Some of the sets of terms below form semantic fields. For each set:

(1) Identify the words that do not belong to the same semantic field as the others in the set.

(2) Identify the superordinate term of the remaining semantic field, if there is one (it may be a word in the set).

(3) Determine whether some terms are less marked than others, and justify your claim.

a. acquire, buy, collect, hoard, win, inherit, steal

b. whisper, talk, narrate, report, tell, harangue, scribble, instruct, brief

c. road, path, barn, way, street, freeway, avenue, thoroughfare, interstate, method

d. stench, smell, reek, aroma, bouquet, odoriferous, perfume, fragrance, scent, olfactory

Key: (1) a. hoard (all other words are indicating “the way one gets sth.”)

b. scribble (all other words concern about “manner in talking” while scribble is a “manner of writing”)

c. barn (all other words relates to “way”.)

d. olfactory (all other words are a kind of “smell”, while olfactory is the organ of smelling)

(2) a. “acquire/get”; b. “tell/say”; c. “way”; d. “smell”.

(3) Yes, there are words which are less marked than other words. Let’s take a group of words for example: words like road, path, way, street and method are less marked than words like freeway, avenue, thoroughfare, and interstate. The less marked members of a semantic field will usually be easier to learn and remember than more marked members. Typically, a less marked word consists of only one morpheme, in contrast to more marked words. The less marked member of a semantic field cannot be described by using the name of another member of the same field, for instance, method cannot be replaced by street.

6．Identify which of the following may be considered to have or to be homographs, homophones, homonyms or polysemy:

sea; break; line; ear; prayer; mature; trace; house

Key: Homographs: break n./break v. line n./line v. ear n./ear v.

Homophones: sea/see

Homonyms: break n./break v. line n./line v. ear n./ear v.

Polysemy: sea, mature, trace, house.

7．What are the differences between less marked and more marked terms in the same semantic field?

Key: The differences between less marked words and marked words in a semantic field are:

The less marked members of a semantic field will usually be easier to learn and remember than more marked members. Typically, a less marked word consists of only one morpheme, in contrast to more marked words. The less marked member of a semantic field cannot be described by using the name of another member of the same field; while more marked words can be thus described. Less marked words also tend to be used more frequently in conversation and writing. Besides, less marked words are also often broader in meaning than more marked terms. Finally, less marked words are not the result of the metaphorical usage of the name of another object or concept, whereas more marked words often are.

8．For each group of words given below, state what semantic feature or features distinguish between the classes of (a) words and (b) words. If asked, also indicate a semantic feature shared by both the (a) words and the (b) words.

Example: a. widow, mother, sister, aunt, maid

b. widower, father, brother uncle, valet

The (a) and (b) words are "human".

The (a) words are "female" and the (b) words are "male".

(1) a. bachelor, man, son, paperboy, pope, chief

b. bull, rooster, drake, ram

The (a) and (b) words are __________________

The (a) words are ______________________

The (b) words are ______________________

(2) a. ask, tell, say, talk, converse

b. shout, whisper, mutter, drawl, holler

The (a) and (b) words are __________________

The (a) words are _____________________

The (b) words are _____________________

(3) a. walk, run, skip, jump, hop, swim

b. fly, skate, ski, ride, cycle, canoe, hang-glide

The (a) and (b) words are ___________________

The (a) words are ______________________

The (b) words are ______________________

Key: (1) The (a) and (b) words are “male living/animate things”

The (a) words are “human beings”

The (b) words are “animals”

(2) The (a) and (b) words are “speaking”

The (a) words are “reciprocal”

The (b) words are “alone”

(3) The (a) and (b) words are “sports”

The (a) words are “done with one’s body”

The (b) words are “done with instruments”