语言学教案Chapter 5 Meaning(4)

SEMANTIC FEATURES/SEMANTIC COMPONENTS: semantic units smaller than the meaning of a word. (Pp 170)

E.g. boy: HUMAN, YOUNG, MALE

woman: HUMAN, ADULT, FEMALE

YOUNG: ～ADULT

FEMALE: ～MALE

E.g. father = PARENT (x, y) & MALE (x)

mother = PARENT (x, y) & ～ MALE (x)

son = CHILD (x, y) & MALE (x)

die = BECOME (x, (～ALIVE(x)))

kill = CAUSE (x, (BECOME (y, (～ALIVE (y)))))

murder = INTEND (x, (CAUSE (x, (BECOME (y, (～ALIVE (y)))))))

Synonyms: words or expressions with the same semantic components E.g. bachelor, unmarried man: HUMAN, ADULT, UNMARRIED

Antonyms: words with contrasting semantic components

E.g. cold & hot, give & take

Hyponyms: words which have all the semantic components of another E.g. boy & girl are hyponyms of child

Sense relations between sentences:

E.g.1.a. * John killed Bill but Bill didn’t die.

b. * John killed Bill but he was not the cause of Bill’s death.

c. * John murdered Bill without intending to.

Entailment

E.g. a. John killed Bill.

b. Bill died.

Difficulties

1) Polysemous words will have different sets of semantic components.

2) The difference between the semantic components differs.

C.f. MALE and FEMALE (absolute) & ADULT and YOUNG (relative)

boy and man (clear-cut)& girl and woman (vague)

3) There may be words whose semantic components are difficult to ascertain. Question: How to express the semantic features?

METALANGUAGE (原语言): a language used for talking about another language

5.5. Sentence meaning

1) The sentence meaning is not merely a sum of word meaning, and it is related to word order.

E.g. a. The man chased the dog.

b. The dog chased the man.

2) Sentences have thematic meaning.

E.g. a. I’ve already seen that film.

b. That film I’ve already seen.

3) The sentence meaning is connected with its syntactic structure.

E.g. The son of Pharaoh’s daughter is the daughter of Pharaoh’s son.

5.5.1 An integrated theory