Download Lexical Semantics … cont`d

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It is
concerned with the meanings of words and
how the meanings of sentences are derived
from them. Semantics is based largely on the
study of logic in philosophy.
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What is meaning? Why does a certain set of
words mean one thing and a similar set mean
something very different? When do two
different sentences mean the same thing? How
can one sentence mean more than one thing?
Meaning is a Multifaceted Phenomenon
1.
2.
Language meaning communicates information about
the world around us. A language is essentially a
system of symbols, and symbols are things which
stand for other things. Theories of information
content look at the relationship between a word and
what it refers to.
Language meanings are things understood and
produced in the mind of the speaker/hear as he or she
uses the language. Meanings are a cognitive and
psychological phenomenon. The meaning of a noun
like ‘bird’: is it a dictionary definition? A mental
image? Or the concept of a typical bird? Theories of
mental representations of meanings examine this
aspect.
Meaning is a Multifaceted Phenomenon
3. Language meaning is a social phenomenon in that the
relationship between speaker and hearer comes into
play in determining meaning, i.e., the Context of an
Utterance, e.g.
a- ‘The fish is very good today.’
b- ‘Phew. It’s cold in here.’
Where’s the speaker with respect to the door in the
following two sentences?!!
c- The door opened and two men went in
d- The door opened and two men came in
Semantics
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What kind of semantic knowledge does a nativespeaker have about his/her language that the linguist
wants to explore? Three aspects of semantic structure
of language can be thought of to answer this
question:
1.
The linguist tries to understand why certain words
can be combined together in a semantically
acceptable way, while others cannot, e.g. the two
sentences below are grammatically well-formed, but
the later is NOT semantically acceptable.
- Hatim arrived yesterday.
- Hatim arrived tomorrow.
Semantics
2. A linguist also wants to know why anyone who knows
a language recognizes certain phrases and sentences
as having similar meanings, e.g.
- I am exhausted and I wish to sleep.
- I am tired and I want to go to bed.
3. A linguist wants to know how hearers not only
recognize ambiguous sentences but can also use the
surrounding context to choose the most likely of
possible interpretations, e.g.
- Visiting relatives can be very boring.
Semantics
A major division in semantics is between:
1.
2.
Lexical semantics: the meanings of words, and
Compositional semantics: The way that the
meaning of whole sentences is determined from the
meanings of the individual words and the syntactic
structure in which they are combined, e.g.
a- The dog chased the cat
b- The cat chased the dog
c- The dog was chased by the cat
Approaches to the study of word meaning
1.
Componential Analysis (lexical de-composition): the
meaning of each lexical item is made up of certain
basic semantic features. It refers to the description
of the meanings of words through structured sets of
sematic features which are given as ‘present’ or
‘absent’.
+ animate / - animate + human / - human,
+ adult / - adult,
+ male - male
child,
mare, stallion,
hen, rooster
Componential Analysis
Table Cow Girl Woman Boy Man Father Mother
Animate
human
male
Female
Married
Adult
Activity

Find the semantic features that distinguish
each member of the following pairs:
1- bull – cow
3- cow – calf
5- child – bull
246-
woman – cow
man – child
man – bull
Componential Semantics
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Componential analysis is also used with different
word categories, e.g. Female is part of the meaning
of the noun mother, the verb breast-feed, the
adjective pregnant.
?? The police killed James but James is not dead
Cause is a verbal property of : darken, kill, solidify
Semantic Property
Motion
Contact
Creation
Sense
Verbs having it
bring, fall, walk, run
hit, kiss, touch
build, make, invent
see, feel, hear, watch
Lexical Semantics

Lexical Semantics deals with a language’s
lexicon, or the collection of words in a
language.

Lexical Relations: A useful way of
understanding word meaning is by studying
such lexical relations as: polysemy,
homonymy,
synonymy,
antonymy,
hyponymy.
Lexical Semantics
1- Polysemy: A lexical item is said to be polysemous if it
has several meanings which are all related.
 Foot: human foot, foot of a mountain, foot of a bed.

Bank: financial institution/ the building where a
financial institution offers services/ it means to “rely
upon” (e.g. "I'm your friend, you can bank on me")

Wood: a piece of a tree / a geographical area with many
trees
Head: part of the body above neck / person in charge of
an institution
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Lexical Semantics
2- Homonymy: It is a word that is written or
pronounced the same way as another, but which
has a different meaning.
bank
check
spring
light
fair
lie
There are two types of Homonyms:
1. Homophones: words which sound the same but have
different meanings and often in spelling (which and
witch) , (sealing/ceiling), (meet/meat)
2. Homographs: words that are spelled the same but
have different meanings and often different
pronunciations (fair/fair), (wind/wind)
Activity
Give at least one homonym with a different
spelling of each of the following:
1- too
2- flee
3- site
4- fair
5- there
6- sea
7- meet
8- pear
9- by
10- plane
Lexical Semantics
3- Synonymy: Two lexical items are said to be
synonymous if they have the same meaning, e.g.
answer/reply, freedom/liberty, broad/wide.
Perfect synonymy in English is very rare.
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Answer/reply
Mary had one correct answer on the exam.
Mary has one correct reply on the exam (Wrong).
Carry/bear
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The policeman was carrying a gun.
The letter bears no signature.
Tall building/tall boy
High building but NOT high boy
Absolute synonymy comes with dialect variation
Autumn/fall , lift/elevator, rabbit/bunny
Lexical Semantics … Activity

Give at least one synonym for each of the
following:
1- pretty
2- mend
3- fair
4- admire
5- big
6- below
7- relax
8- sad
9- start
10- occupation
Lexical Semantics … cont’d
4- Antonymy refers to words with opposite
meanings. The basic property of two words that
are antonyms is that they share all but one
semantic property. Beautiful and tall are not
antonyms; beautiful and ugly are antonyms as the
semantic property is absent in one and present in
the other.
Lexical Semantics … cont’d
There are three types of antonyms
1- Gradable antonyms: They are at the opposite ends
of a continuous spectrum of meanings. They are pairs
of words such as big-small, old-young, slow-fast,
short-tall. These words can be interpreted in terms
of being bigger or better, or older than the other item
being compared.
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Comparison is made in the contexts of the same things
compared. So a house is newer than another house not
another car.
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Non-gradable antonyms such as single-married,
male-female, which do not allow expressions of
degree, so we cannot say very female, quite
married, more married
Lexical Semantics … cont’d
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In English, the larger item of the pair is often called
the unmarked or the neutral, e.g.
How big is it? How tall is he?
How old is she?
One thousand feet high
Five feet tall

These questions do not pre-judge the matter. They
are not biased and open to the expectation of the
inquirer.

When we ask How small is it? How young is he?
How short is she? We pre-judge the matter and claim
that it is in fact small, short, and young, etc. This,
however, is not universal as in Japanese they would
ask how short is it? How thin is it?
Lexical Semantics … cont’d
2- Complementary Antonyms are pairs of words such
as alive-dead, male-female, married-single. The
absence of one implies the presence of the other. If
one is not male, then one is certainly female.
In certain contexts, the following can be complementary.
Food
drink
Land
sea
Transitive
intransitive
mortal
immortal
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Related to complementary pairs are sets of terms like colors
where the assertion of one denies the presence of the others. If
we have a set of words like red, yellow, pink, black and white.
THIS IS GREEN means it is not yellow, or red, or black, etc.
John is not single
implies
John is married
Lexical Semantics … cont’d
3- Relational antonyms (converse antonyms): they are
pairs in which one describes a relationship between
two objects and the other describes the same
relationship when the two objects are reversed, such
as parent-child, teacher-student, doctor-patient, lendborrow, push-pull, give-take, buy-sell.

The same verb can be in a converse relationship:
- John rented the house to Peter
- Peter rented the house from John
Lexical Semantics … Activity
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o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Give the best antonym for each of the
following words and decide its type:
disappear
true
kind
day
dark
entrance
popular
heavy
good
Lexical Semantics … cont’d
5- Hyponym: The meaning of one lexical item is
included in the meaning of another in some type of
hierarchical relationship.
- A horse is a hyponym of animal.
- beef is a hyponym of meat
- football is a hyponym of game
Living things
_____________________
creatures
Plants
animal
insect
vegetable flower tree
horse dog snake ant cockroach
poodle
carrot
Jasmine pine
Lexical Semantics … cont’d

Metaphor is a phrase that is not used in its usual or literal
meaning but is given a different but analogous one. The
essence of a metaphor is that it finds a similarity between two
things that are on first consideration quite different from each
other.

The sunshine of her smile: the beauty, the sweetness
John is a snake in the grass: a false friend.
Lame duck: ineffective, helpless person
Dr John is a butcher
‫الوديان الضاحكة‬
‫السماء الغاضبة‬
‫عطر صارخ‬
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Metaphors can be seen as mappings from a source domain
onto a target domain or experience which facilitate the
understanding of complex or abstract domains and concepts
by constructing them in terms of experientially concrete or
familiar ones.
Phrasal verbs
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Phrasal verb is a special type of idioms which is made
up of a verb followed by a preposition or an adverbial
particle or both, and usually the meaning is slightly or
considerably different from the literal meaning of the
words.
We come across something: to see or discover it.
Look down on something: scorn or despise it
Put up with: tolerate, endure
Look after , Look up , break out , break up
These structures are much more frequent in
spoken English than in written English
Phrasal verbs … cont’d

They can be classified into three types
depending on how much change of the verb
meaning takes place with the addition of the
particle(s):
1- Transparent type: The meaning of the whole
phrase is the total sum of its parts:
come in ‫ يدخل‬get away ‫ يهرب‬get out of ‫يتملص‬
go up ‫ يصعد‬go on ‫يستمر‬
Phrasal verbs … cont’d
2- Semi-transparent type: the meaning of the
whole phrase is not exactly the total sum of its
parts, but can be guessed correctly in most
cases:
see off ‫ يودع‬get away with )‫يفلت (من عقاب‬
come to ‫ يفيق‬get over ‫يتغلب على‬
3- Opaque Type: the meaning of the phrasal verb is not
the total sum of its parts and is usually very difficult
to guess unless the contexts makes it very clear:
see (someone) to ‫ يعتني بــ‬put up with ‫يتحمل‬
send down )‫يفصل أو يطرد طالب (من جامعة‬
get on with ‫ ينسجم‬get at ‫يحاول االقناع‬
Phrasal verbs … cont’d
Often one and the same phrasal verb can
belong to two types:
1.1 come across the road
1.2 come across some old letters
2.1
put (hand ) up = raise hand
2.2
put up (the money ) = provide funding
2.3
put (somebody) up = host someone
3.1 put out (cigarette)
3.2 put out (the cat) = leave outside
3.3 put out (somebody) = annoy
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Arabic Phrasal Verbs
Arabic has the same phenomenon on a large
scale. But here the particle following the verb
is more frequently a preposition rather than an
adverbial particle.
As in English the context helps in guessing the
meaning of the phrase, though not always
successfully.
Unlike English, this phenomenon is more
common in written than in spoken Arabic.
Let’s consider the following examples:
‫‪Arabic Phrasal Verbs‬‬
‫‪‬‬
‫رغب في (الشيء) ‪ ، desire‬رغب عن (الشيء)‬
‫‪dislike‬‬
‫‪‬‬
‫نظر إلى (الشيء)‪ ،‬نظر في (الشيء) ‪، consider‬‬
‫نظر بين (متقاضين ) ‪ ،‬نظر لـ (شخص) ‪take care‬‬
‫‪‬‬
‫نام على (الشيء) ‪ ،‬نام عن (الشيء) ‪ ،‬مال إلى ‪ ،‬مال‬
‫عن ‪ ،‬مال مع ‪ ،‬مال به إلى‬
Phrasal Verbs : Activity
Translate the following into Arabic:
1- Abdulla’s parents are very much set against his
marriage.
2- the drought will set the country’s progress back several
years.
3- Setting aside my wishes in this matter, what would you
really like to do?
4- The discovery of gold in California sat off a rush to go
there.
5- He is a really a good teacher; he puts across his subject
very well.
6- She was really put about when I went to see her.
7- The army put down the rebellion in less than a week.
8- Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
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