A brief overview of the chapters along with the notes you took during the classes covering the chapters. Write, a detailed description of some aspects of the chapters and the exp

GRAMMATICAL MEANING: NOUNS AND NOUN PHRASES

Chapter 13

Lexical meaning:

semantic information carried by major lexical units (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Grammatical meaning:

semantic information in a sentence not carried by major lexical units.

Grammatical meaning can be treated under four major headings

LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL MEANING

The meanings carried by grammatical elements

Meanings linguistic expressions have by virtue of belonging to particular grammatical categories (noun, verb, etc.)

Meanings signaled by sequential order of elements

Meaning carried by grammatical constructions

FOUR MAJOR HEADINGS OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS

One way of characterizing meanings by grammatical units:

Closed-set items

Open-set items

MEANINGS CARRIED BY GRAMMATICAL UNITS

Belong to small substitution sets

Principal function is to articulate the grammatical structure of sentences

Change at a relatively slow rate through time

Single speaker is unlikely to see loss or gain of items in their lifetime.

Inventory of items in a particular closed-set grammatical category is effectively fixed

CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOSED-SET ITEMS

Belong to relatively large substitution sets

Relatively rapid turnover in membership of substitution classes

Single speaker is likely to encounter many losses and gains in a single lifetime

Principal function is to carry the meaning of a sentence

CHARACTERISTICS OF OPEN-SET ITEMS

Both closed- and open-set items carry meaning

Different functions mean that there are differences in the characteristics of the meanings they carry

A closed-set item, as a grammatical element, has to be able to combine without anomaly with a wide range of roots

must have a meaning which is flexible, or broad enough, or sufficiently `attenuated', not to generate clashes too easily

must signal contrasts which recur frequently

CLOSED VS. OPEN-SET ITEMS

Open-set:

no limit to the particularity or richness of the meaning an open-set element

no requirements for recurrent meanings or wide co-occurrence possibilities

typically carry the burden of the semantic content of utterances.

participate in complex paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures

content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) verbs) prototypically have one open-set morpheme (usually called the root morpheme) and may also have one or more closed-set items in the form of affixes

CLOSED SET VS. OPEN-SET ITEMS (C0NTINUED)

Languages differ in the degree to which the order of elements is grammatically significant

Semantic effects changes in the order of elements produce

In English, word order goes to the heart of grammar and signals basic aspects of meaning

In Latin, word order does not signal basic grammatical relations

Change of word order in Latin can have the same sort of effect on information structure

MEANINGS SIGNALIZED BY WORD ORDER

Alternative perspective

Incorporates order information along with other types of information

Grammatical constructions are bearers of meaning independent of the lexical items

MEANINGS CARRIED BY CONSTRUCTIONS

Number:

an inflectional category of nouns or noun phrases

not found in all languages

Semantically all concerned with how many there are of some item

The number system in English has only two terms:

singular

Plural

NUMBER AND COUNTABILITY

Cannot occur in the singular without a determiner

Occur normally in the plural

Quantifiable by a few, many, and numerals, but not by much or little

COUNT NOUNS

Can occur in the singular without a determiner

Are odd in the plural

Are quantifiable by a little, much, but not by a few, many

MASS NOUNS

The vast majority of nouns in English can be found with both count and mass uses

For the majority of nouns, one use is intuitively more basic than the other

Two significant phenomena and their semantic correlates:

basic count nouns used as mass nouns

basic mass nouns used as count nouns

SECONDARY USES OF COUNT AND MASS NOUNS

Basic count nouns used as mass nouns

Basic mass nouns used as count nouns

Semi-mass use of count nouns

Singular nouns with optional plural concord

Plural nouns with optional singular concord

Pluralia tanta

SECONDARY USES

In many languages it is not possible to count things directly

A special grammatical element called a classifier is necessary

usually a separate word or an affix

Encodes some semantic property of the noun being counted

Classifiers

A classification system for nouns

Affects grammatical matters such as agreement and pronominal reference

GENDER

Many different types of gender system can be found in the world's languages

Most widespread are those which correlate to a greater or lesser degree with the sex of the referent

Used to make a distinction between natural gender and grammatical gender.

Appropriate pronoun can be predicted with a high degree of success on the basis of the sex of the referent

GENDER SYSTEMS

EXTENSIONS OF MEANING

Chapter 12

The reading of a word with the earliest recorded use.

The most frequently occurring reading of a word.

The default reading of a word.

The reading from which the most plausible path of change begins.

The reading most closely related to basic human experience.

ESSENCE OF LITERALNESS

Word is entrenched and familiar part of a language

Speakers no longer feel that a figure of speech is involved at all

NATURALIZED EXTENSIONS

Readings which are well established

Presumably have entries in the mental lexicon

Are felt to be figures of speech

ESTABLISHED EXTENSIONS

Readings are ones for which there are no entries in the mental lexicon

They cannot be `looked up‘

Have to be generated and interpreted using strategies of meaning extension such as metaphor and metonymy

NOVEL EXTENSIONS

Dictionary definition: "The use of a word or phrase to mean something different from the literal meaning" (Oxford Advance Learner's Dictionary)

Lakoff:

metaphor is all-pervasive in language

For most part effortlessly interpreted

Deserves constructive consideration

METAPHOR

Solidly grounded in language

Meaning of a word constituted a semantic field

consisted of all the possible contexts of the word organized in terms of normality

the most normal contexts forming the core region of the field

least normal forming the periphery

Semantic field of every word encompassed the whole vocabulary

Each word imposed a different `core-periphery' organization on it.

HAAS: INTERACTION OF SEMANTIC FIELDS

A new semantic field was created

Core was formed by the contexts with the highest joint degree of normality for both words.

New semantic field defined a new meaning

the metaphoric meaning

TWO WORDS BROUGHT INTO INTERACTION

Rejected both the substitution view of metaphor and the comparison view

Mechanism of metaphor involved the projection of a set of associative implications derived from one entity onto another entity.

The implications are not necessarily identical for the two subjects

The implicative complex of the secondary subject is an analogue model of the implicative complex intended to be inferred for the primary subject.

MAX BLACK

Distinction is made between representative and interpretive uses of language

parallel to the literal/figurative distinction

This account of metaphor incorporates two significant claims:

metaphor is nothing special or deviant

simply an extreme case of `loose talk‘

the interpretation of an utterance used interpretively is very much a function of context

interpreters look to maximize contextual relevance with the least expenditure of effort

RELEVANCE THEORY

Metaphors are:

an essential component of human cognition

conceptual in nature

a means whereby ever more abstract and intangible areas of experience can be conceptualized in terms of the familiar and concrete

LAKOFF

Metaphors involve

a source domain, usually concrete and familiar

a target domain, usually abstract or at least less well structured

a set of mapping relations, or correspondences

LAKOFF

The correspondences involved in metaphor are of two kinds:

Ontological-involving entities in the two domains

Epistemic- involving relations of knowledge about the entities

LAKOFF

Conceptual elements, schemas, involving space, motion and force

Lakoff:

Basic semantic notions such as time, quantity, state, change, cause, and category membership are also metaphorically understood as extensions of image-schemas

IMAGE-SCHEMAS

Lack of context sensitivity

Alleged lack of structure in target domains

Fusion not accounted for

Emergent meaning

CRITICISMS OF LAKOFF

Neither of the components requires an extended construal

Comparison process is overtly signaled

No need for anomaly as a trigger

Different conceptions remain distinct

Fusion is not characteristic of simile

SIMILIES

X (be) like Y

John is like a lion.

X (V) like Y

Tree branches cracked like guns going off.

X (be) Adj. like Y

His skin was dry like parchment.

S ‘as if‘ S2

He acts as if he thinks he's the boss.

SIMILIE FORMS

Strategy for extending word-meanings

Responsible for a great proportion of the cases of so-called regular polysemy

Relies on a literal association between two components within a single domain

No restructuring involved

METONYMY

Historical processes of semantic change linked to synchronic processes of meaning extension.

Synchronic meaning extension forms an essential part of diachronic change

Meaning of a word may change along any of a range of semantic dimensions

SEMANTIC CHANGE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

How to write the journal?

Summarize the main points in the required chapters in a creative way and write your reflection.

You can write the journal as an essay

Or

You can use a mind map to summarize the main points and then write a reflection in a form of a paragraph under the mind map.