Chapter 7 Semantics

Semantics: the study of meaning in language lexical semantics: the study of how words mean sentence semantics: What is ‘studying meaning’? relations between words and the world ==> traditionally, reference. problems: what do ‘above’, ‘lazy’, ‘meanwhile’, ‘beauty’..... refer to? ‘would you like to adopt a stray dog? what does it refer to?

Typical cases of reference deixis = indexical expressions personal deixis: I, you, he, she… Spatial deixis : here, there temporal deixis: now, then, today…..

lexical fields: sets of words that somehow belong together. ex.) household pets: dog, cat, hamster, parakeet, goldfish

Lexical Relations (Nyms) 1) hyponymy 하의관계 : a relation of inclusion or entailment musical instrument <- hypernym (superordinate term) / / | ∖ ∖ ↑entails ↓includes violin piano flute guitar percussion <-- hyponym -I bought a piano. entails I bought a musical instrument, but not vice versa. -I like musical instruments includes I like pianos, not vice versa.

2) Meronymy: part-whole relationships fender-car, week-month, head-body 3) synonymy 동의관계 : different words with same/similar correct-right, casual-informal ==> no words which have exactly the same meaning; different uses i) context-dependent: -pale color, light color, *pale books, light books -the peel of the orange, the skin of the orange, Sue's skin, *Sue's peel -powerful/strong arguments, powerful/*strong cars, *powerful/strong tea -a big/large house, my big sister; my large sister

Synonymy ii)different connotations: the speaker's attitude or opinion Japanese-Jap, black-negro, statesman- politician, policeman-cop ( 경찰 - 짭새, iii) different styles: formal vs. colloquial/informal style, written vs. spoken style police officer - cop iv) regional difference: British English cupboard vs. Irish English press

4) Antonymy(oppositeness) 반의 관계 i) simple (binary or complementary) antonyms 단순반의어 : a relation of contradiction = a denial of one term is the assertion of the other. right-wrong, male-female, single-married, on-off, dead-alive *less/*more female/married/alive, *deader, *righter, *singler ii) gradable antonyms 등급반의어 : big-small/litterold-young/newhigh-lowrich-poor proper-improper ① context-dependent comparing norm: A small elephant is a large animal. ② hot-warm-lukewarm-cool-coldlove-like-dislike-hate ③ unmarked(=unbiased, positive) vs. marked(=biased, negative) How long/wide/large/heavy/old is it? vs. How short/narrow/small/light/young is it?

4) Antonymy(oppositeness) iii) converses: a relation between two entities from alternate viewpoints buy-sell, rent-rent(or lease), give-receive, husband-wife, brother-sister, teacher-student, employer-employee Tom bought a car from Sue vs. Sue sold a car to Tom. Tom is a husband of Sue. vs. Sue is a wife of Tom. Tom is in front of Sue. vs. Sue is behind Tom. iv) reverses: a relation between terms describing directional movement come-go, ascend-descend, push-pull, zip-unzip, exhale- inhale, progress-regress, inflate-deflate, (go) up-down, (turn) right-left

5) Homonymy Homonymy: same sounds but different meanings: bank, sound, bark homophones: same sounds but different spellings: to- too-two, tail-tale, flower-flour homographs: lead(v)-lead(n), wind(v)-wind(n), bow polysemous words: 다의어 one word with more than 1 meaning; related to one another court: 'enclosed area', retinue of a sovereign', 'judicial tribunal' bug: 'insect', 'enthusiast', electronic device for eavesdropping', 'design defect in a computer