英语语言学讲义 Lecture 5-semantics

connotations
• Philosophical Ideas • Linguistic Ideas
"human""biped,featherless, rational,etc." - the properties of the entity a word denotes
politician vs. statesman
5.1.4 Affective meaning
• You’re a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobate, and I hate you for it! • 你这个凶残的土霸王,无耻的色鬼。我恨透
你 了！ • I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I
5.3.3 Hyponymy
• Inclusiveness • A is included in / a kind of B. • Cf.: chair and furniture, rose and flower
Co-hyponyms & superordinate
•
• • tulip violet rose
5.1.7 Thematic meaning
• What is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes the message, in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis.
Associative Meaning
5.1.1 Conceptual meaning
• Also called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning. • Refers to logical, cognitive or denotative content. • Concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refers to.
a. Gradable antonymy
b. Complementary antonymy
• • • • alive : dead male : female present : absent innocent : guilty • • • • odd : even pass : fail boy : girl hit : miss
• domicile: very • formal, official • • residence: formal • • abode: poetic • • home: general
steed: poetic horse: general nag: slang gee-gee: baby language
• • • • good ----------------------- bad long ----------------------- short big ----------------------- small Can be modified by adverbs of degree like very. • Can have comparative forms. • Can be asked with how.
c. Converse antonymy
• • • • • buy : sell lend : borrow give : receive parent : child husband : wife • • • • • teacher : student above : below before : after host : guest employer : employee
5.2.2 Sense vs. Reference
• Sense: the way people relate words to each other within the framework of their language • Reference: how language refers to this external world
• presented "a representative list of the main definitons which reputable students of meaning have favoured"
• 16 major categories • 22 all together with sub-categories
5.1.4 Affective meaning
• Reflecting the personal feelings of the speaker, including his attitude to the listener, or his attitude to something he is talking about.
The family tree
• • • • • 舅父 = ‘mother’s brother’ 叔叔 = ‘father’s younger brother’ 伯父 = ‘father’s elder brother’ 姨母 = ‘mother’s sister’ 姑母 = ‘father’s sister’
-additional, esp. emotive meaning.
5.1.3 Social meaning
• What a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. • Dialect: the language of a geographical region or of a social class. • Time: the language of the 18th c., etc. • Province: language of law, of science, of advertising, etc.
5.3.1 Synonymy
• buy/purchase • thrifty/economical/st ingy • autumn/fall • flat/apartment • tube/underground
• Sameness relations • Synonyms
5.3.2 Antonymy
• Mrs Bessie Smith donated the first prize. • The first prize was donated by Mrs Bessie Smith. • They stopped at the end of the corridor. • At the end of the corridor, they stopped.
5.1.6 Collocative meaning
• The associations a word acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment. • pretty: girl, boy, woman, flower, garden, colour, village, etc. • handsome: boy, man, car, vessel, overcoat, airliner, typewriter, etc.
5.1.3 Social meaning
• Status: polite, colloquial, slang, etc. • Modality: language of memoranda, lectures, jokes, etc. • Singularity: the style of Dickens, etc.
5.3 Sense Relations
• Sense• Semantic relations between one word and another- between one linguistic unit and another. • Intralinguistic relations
desk chair table furniture
5.1.2 Connotative meaning
• Philosophical Ideas
connotations "human""biped,featherless, rational,etc." - the properties of the entity a word denotes • denotations • John & Mary
• Geoffrey Leech (1974, 1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Seven types of meaning: 1.Conceptual meaning 2.Connotative meaning 3.Social meaning 4.Affective meaning 5.Reflected and meaning 6.Collocative meaning 7.Thematic meaning
flower
Animal bird fish insect animal human animal tiger lion elephant ...
wonder if you ቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱould be so kind as to lower your voices a little. or • Will you belt up？
5.1.5 Reflected meaning
• Arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense. • When you hear ‘click the mouse twice’, you think of Jerry being hit twice by Tom so you feel excited. • Many taboo terms are result of this.
symbolizes
refers to
symbol -------------------------------------- referent (word) stands for (object)
5.2.1 Sense
• ‘Meaning’ is not some kind of ‘entity’ separate from language. • That words ‘have meaning’ means only that they are used in a certain way in a sentence. There is no ‘meaning’ beyond the meaning of individual words and sentences.
Meaning
What is Semantics ?
• Semantics the study of meaning of linguistic units. • words • sentences
• Plato
• Lao Zi
5.1 The meaning of meaning
• C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (1923). The Meaning of Meaning.
5.2. Referential theory
• Words → Meaning: Words ‘name’ or ‘refer to’ things -- Platonic • Words→Concepts→Things: Ogden & Richards thought/concept/image