Download Exploring Semantic Meaning: Types, Theories, and Applications and more Lecture notes Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity!
Introduction :
When communicating we use a sentence or a clause. In this regard a clause is a grammatical unit of structure in English with a subject and a predicate of its own.
THEMATISATION: Thematic Constructions
Thematic Structure (Role/Functions)
THEME- The term Theme is used in linguistics to refer to the way we speak.
The process of organizing the theme is sentences for the sake of emphasis is called Thematization or Topicalization.
I t identifies the relative importance of his subject matter.
Huddelston (1884:16-17) distinguishes five forms of Thematization which he calls Thematic Systems.
The constructions are described as being unmarked or marked.
The unmarked is the usual form of structure.
The marked is the unusual or modifies
Thematised structure
The marked form is the thematised structure
In the examples given below, the 1st^ example is the unmarked form while the 2nd^ is the marked form.
Thematised structure (cont.)
They are exemplified by use of construction that donate:
voice,
cleft,
„There‟ insertion,
thematic fronting, and
extra position transformation.
Voice
(i) His father beat the boy = unmarked, active.
(ii) The boy was beaten by his father = marked passive
(i) The ladies are singing songs at the party unmarked; active
(ii) Songs are being sung by the ladies at the party
Cleft Construction Vs Non-Cleft
In a cleft construction the impersonal pronoun „it‟ is used together with the correct form of verb to create emphasis, example.
i). John arranged the books
ii). It is John who arranged the books
i). Jane is wedding
ii). It is Jane who is wedding soon
„There‟ Insertion
„In the insertion the subject in the unmarked construction is moved to the verb and its position is field in with the pronoun „there‟
Example
i).Two people are standing at the gate (unmarked)
Ii). There are two people standing at the gate (marked)
There‟ Insertion (cont.)
i). A woman was carrying a baby (unmarked)
ii).There was woman carrying a baby (marked)
Thematic Fronting
Thematic fronting involves the reordering of elements in the sentence so that the one to be emphasized is placed first.
i). have known you for a year
- When you combine structures using Parataxis and Hypotaxis,
the structures that result are known as:
- - Paratactic and Hypotactic structures
- Parataxis and Hypotaxis(Cont).
- Parataxis and Hypotaxis are general relations that are not restricted to the rank of the clause.
They define complexes at any rank:
- clause complexes,
- group or phrase complexes,
- word complex
Parataxis is the Coordination, linking / combining of
elements of equal status or rank.
- Both the initiating and the continuing element are free,
- Free in the sense that each could stand on its own as
a functioning whole.
Hypotaxis in the coordination, binding or conjoining of elements of unequal ranks or status.
The dominant element is free, but
The dependent one is not free.
- For example:
- (1) PARATAXIS: His first and best novel is on the market.
- (2) HYPOTAXIS: His first successful novel is on the market.
- Para and Hypo (cont.)
- In example (1) the Adjectives „”first” and “best” in the phrase:
His first and best novel both modify the noun Novel each in its own right.
The two modifiers are of equal value and are joined by the coordinating conjunction „and‟.
Thus Adjectives are said to be in Paratactic Relations to each other.
- In. example (2) „first‟ does not modify „novel‟ directly. It modifies „successful novel‟. „Successful‟ in turn modifies „novel‟ directly.
- There is a hierarchy in the relationship. „First‟ and „successful‟ are in Hypotactic relation.
- the Paratactic relation
- , the Paratactic relation is logically
- Symmetrical and
- Transitive.
- This can be exemplified by the „and‟ relation:
- SALT and PEPPER implies PEPPER and SALT so the relation is symmetrical.
- SALT and PEPPER, PEPPER and MUSTARD, together imply SALT and MUSTARD, so the relation is transitive.
- Parataxis involves coordinating conjunction and Independent clauses.
- Hypotactic relation
- The Hypotactic relation is logically:
- Non Symmetrical and
- Non transitive.
- For example, WHEN:
- „I breath when I sleep‟, does not imply „I sleep when I breath‟ Non Symmetrical.
- „I fret when I have to drive slowly‟, and „I have to drive slowly when it‟s been raining‟ together do not imply „I fret when it‟s been raining‟. Non-Transitive.
smaller parts that combine to form the meaning –
E.g. The ------------------ is reading a book. N (+ human)
This structure configuration would make it possible for us to predict what nouns would make the above sentence semantically odd. Examples would be table or tree or dog because all have the feature [-HUMAN]
Conceptual meaning is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication. It is an essential part of what a language is. Unlike the other types of meaning, conceptual meaning is there/present whether people are talking or not.
(ii) CONNOTATIVE MEANING
We may understand Conceptual meaning when we contrast it with connotative meaning. Connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to over and above its purely conceptual meaning. For instance, the word WOMAN has the conceptual meaning of:
But over and above this it may be associated with the following meanings:
- Having a womb
- Capable of speech
- Experienced in cookery
- Skirt or dress wearing Etc, including putative properties like: Frail, cowardly, emotional etc.
Connotations vary from age to age and from society to society. The connotation of a word/expression concerns the real world experience one associates with the word/expression, when one uses or hears it. Connotation can thus be said to be unlike Conceptual meaning which is an integral part of a language, in the following ways: Connotation is:
(i) Not specific to a language: it is shared by other communicative systems like visual art and music.
(ii) Connotative meanings are peripheral compared with conceptual meaning, because they are unstable. They change from time to time, culture to culture etc.
(iii) Connotative meaning is indeterminate and open – ended. Any characteristic of the referent identified subjectively or objectively contributes to the connotative meaning of the expression which denotes it.
(iii) SOCIAL MEANING Social meaning together with affective meaning concern the aspects of communication which have to do with the situation in which an utterance takes place.
Social meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. When a piece of language occurs, for example:
- Its STYLE will tell us something;
- Its PRONUNCIATION will tell us the dialect being spoken;
- Its TONE will tell us something of the social relationship between the hearer and the speaker.
It is possible for language that is occurring to relay such information because there is variation in language according to:
DIALECT-(Northern type) TIME- (Old English) PROVINCE (Language of Law, Science, Advertising etc) STATUS (Polite, Colloquial, slang etc) MODALITY (Language of Memoranda, Lectures, Jokes, etc) SINGULARITY (The style of Dickens, of Hemingway, Wole Soyinka, Achebe etc) (Classification by Crystal and Davy – Investigating English Style)
(iv) AFFECTIVE MEANING
This is the aspect of language that communicates meaning about the speaker‟s feelings and attitude about the addressee or the subject of talk. This is often explicitly conveyed through the conceptual or connotative content of words used. It is the choice of words and expressions used that will tell the hearer the feeling and attitude of the speaker, or the degree of politeness of the speaker. Also the TONE of voice is important in conveying
Also: Cows wander, but people stroll Dogs bark, but cats mews Sheep bleats, but horse neighs
You tremble with fear, but quiver with excitement You may see: Flock of sheep but heard of cows School of whales but pride of lions
ASSOCIATIVE MEANING
Reflected, Collocative, Affective and Social meaning: all have more in common with Connotative meaning than conceptual meaning. They all have the same:
(i) Open ended variable character, (ii) They lend themselves to analysis in terms of ranges, rather than in discrete either this or that terms.
They can all be brought together under the heading of ASSOCIATIVE MEANING. To explain communication of the levels of associative meaning we need to employ nothing more sophisticated than an elementary ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY of mental connections based upon contiguities of experience. We contrast them all with conceptual meaning because conceptual meaning seems to require the postulation of intricate mental structures that are specific to language and to the human species.
(vi) THEMATIC MEANING This concerns what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes the message, in terms of:
It is the meaning you perceive by looking at which aspect of meaning is emphasized by virtue of its being put on focus through ordering. Consider for example the sentences:
[1] Mr. Kamau donated the first prize. [2] The first prize was donated by Mr. Kamau.
It is often felt that the active sentence [1] has a different meaning from its passive
equivalent [2] although they have the same conceptual content. [1] answers the question: What did Mr. Kamau donate? While, [2] answers the question: By whom was the first prize donated? Thematic meaning is mainly a matter of choice between alternative grammatical constructions. E.g.,
[3] They stopped at the end of the corridor. [4] At the end of the corridor they stopped. [5] I like brown bread. [6] Brown bread I like. [7] It is brown bread I like.
The kind of contrasted ordering and emphasis illustrated above can also be conveyed by lexical means. By substituting for example belongs to for owns:
[8] My brother owns the largest store in Nairobi. [9] The largest store in Nairobi belongs to my brother.
In other cases it is by stress and intonation rather than grammatical construction that we convey thematic meaning , or highlight points of emphasis in our talk.
[8] Bill uses an electric kettle/pen. [10] The kind of pen that bill uses is an electric one.
Defining Semantics Semantics is the study of meaning. Meaning covers a variety of aspects of Language which include: The Dictionary meaning of a word,
What people mean when they produce an utterance, What people mean when they use a language as opposed to another, What a sentence presupposes, There is no general agreement about the nature of meaning – particularly which of the above aspects of meaning strictly fall under Semantics. The Dictionary meaning of a word may fall under Semantics, but what people mean when they use words may overstep that boundary. This is because-Words do not always express their literal meaning, i.e., what they may most obviously be thought to mean. -There is some other meaning besides the literal meaning of the words. The literal is the conceptual meaning. The other meaning may be conveyed by: (i) Intonation – e.g., FALL - RISE on the accented word (ii) Facial Expression, (iii) Sarcasm – such that: She‟s very clever may mean she is not very honest I think so may mean I don‟t really know That very clever may mean that‟s very stupid
Problems/Difficulties with the NAMING View (1) It seems to apply only to NOUNS (or nominal expressions in general.) It is difficult if not impossible to extend the theory of naming to include the other parts of speech. Eg., Verbs, Adjectives, Prepositions etc. For instance, to use Adjectival words: Adjectival words like attractive, useful, plausible, to label or identify things may be difficult because you cannot point at physical objects that they denote. Verbs: Also it is impossible to identify what is named by a verb. For instance, if you take the verb WALK, RUN and you look at a boy running or walking, it is impossible to separate, isolate the boy from the running / walking part of it. With a noun we can often draw a picture of the object that is denoted. This is however impossible with a verb. Consider, for instance, verbs like: like, remember, see , and think ., How would you actually isolate these and point at them? Impossible.
It is the same story for the other parts of speech, e.g., Adverbs, Adjectives, prepositions.
(2) An attempt to retain the NAMING theory/view of meaning to NOUNS only also has a difficulty. The difficulty is in the area of those nouns that relate to creatures that do not exist like: unicorn - ( a mythical animal resembling a horse) goblin - ( small ugly mischievous manlike creature in fairy tales) Such nouns do not denote objects in the world.
The above observations are evidence of the fact that words are not simply names of the objects of our experience. There may be other objects that we have never experienced.
Also there are other NOUNS that while not referring to imaginary items/objects do not refer to physical objects at all: For instance: LOVE, HATE, HONESTY, HUMILITY AMBITION NONSENSE etc Such words refer to ABSTRACT things – and it is not possible to isolate them and show them to people.
(3) Even where there are physical objects that are identifiable by words it is not the case that those words are always used to identify the respective objects. Because you may have one object being referred to by different words: E.g., Evening star Morning star = same object, namely: Planet Venus , but, different meaning.
Another example illustrating the futility of connecting naming with meaning is in the case of
Proper Nouns. While these are used to refer to particular people, places, times and etc, it is debatable whether they have any denotation , and they can hardly be said to have meaning. We would not normally ask: What does Kamau Njuguna mean? Or, What is the meaning of Nairobi? (However there is a question here with regards to the African names. For example: Akinyi which is girls name in Dholuo means = morning and is given to a baby girl Born in the morning)
(4) A fourth difficulty with the Naming as a way of looking at meaning is the fact that even the words that are linked to physical objects that are visible in the world around us are often used to denote a whole set of different objects. For instance words such as: Bottle, Dress, Chair – for all kinds of shapes and sizes and colours. The question one might ask is: “What is it that makes each of these shapes and sizes be recognized as a chair, bottle, dress? This question id difficult to answer because, often the dividing line between the items denoted by one word and those denoted by another is vague and there may be overlap. For example, when is a hill a hill and not a mountain , or s stream a stream and not a river. In the world of experience objects are not clearly grouped together ready to be labeled with a single word. As Palmer (1981:20. Semantics. CUP. Cambridge) says, this is a problem that has bothered philosophers from the time of Plato. The philosophers have come with two extremes, which are clearly unhelpful explanations:
- The REALIST view
- The NOMINALIST view
The REALIST say that all things called by the same name have a common property – that there is some kind of reality that establishes, for example, what makes a chair a chair.
The NOMINALIST say that all things called by the same name have nothing in common but the name. This view is obviously false because we do not use, say, chair or hill for objects that are totally different. The objects so named have something in common. The Realist view is no less invalid because there is no clearly defined, Natural classes of objects in the world around us, simply waiting for a label to be applied to them. It is part of the problem of Semantics to establish what classes there may be. Even if there are no natural classes, it might be argued that there are „universal‟ classes common to all languages. But This not so. The classification of objects in terms of the words used to denote them differs from language to language. In fact the words of a language often reflect not so much the reality of the world, but the interests of the people who speak it.
1(ii) b) COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
A way of formalizing and making absolutely precise the sense relations that hold among lexemes.
Whisper [-SOUND ]
[+ VERBAL ]
[+ VOICELESS ]
Hum [ + SONG ]
[ - VERBAL ]
[ +, -VOICELESS ]
Cat [ - HUMAN ]
[ +, - MALE ]
[+ MAMMAL]
Strengths of Componential Analysis
- Economic and Systematic way of representing sense relations that hold among lexemes
across languages
- It enables us to detect Synonyms.
Eg
Father Dad
[+ HUMAN] [+ HUMAN]
[+ADULT] [+ADULT]
[+MALE] [+MALE]
[+PARENT] [+PARENT]
Kid/child etc.
- It enables us capture contradictions and rule them out.
Eg
Father Mother
[+ HUMAN] [+ HUMAN]
[+ADULT] [+ADULT]
[+MALE] [-MALE]
[+HAVING CHILD] [+HAVING CHILD]
[ + PARENT ] [ + PARENT ]
- Through componential analysis we can capture various levels of antonyms
Eg
Walk Run
[+ MOTION] [+ MOTION]
[+BY FOOT ] [+BY FOOT]
[+SELF PROPOLED] [+ SELF PRPELED]
[+MEDIUM VELOCITY] [-MIDIUM VELOCITY]
- It helps us handle Hyponymy- relation between a word or phrase whose semantic
range is included in another.
to - seems to have no meaning at all.
A distinction is usually made between Grammatical and Lexical words (Ullman ,1962; Carter,1998; Lyons 1977). This distinction is between words that have meaning in isolation- eg., boys , like, play, and those that are mere Grammatical tools. Grammatical words form a closed – class. They include Pronouns, Articles, Auxiliary Verbs, Propositions and Conjunctions. They are also referred to as Structural words, Functional words or Empty words. They belong to the grammar and have only grammatical meaning.
Lexical words form an open class. And They include: Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives, and Adverbs. Lexical words are also referred to as Content or Full words. Lexical words carry a higher informational content than grammatical words. They are not limited in number, and they are subject to change.
A more analytical look at the word reveals an even smaller unit of meaning than the word. This unit, the morpheme, should also be considered as the unit of Semantic meaning. This is because certain Morphemes have clearly separable meanings: For example: LOVE = love + ed ADORE + PAST
However, other meanings carried in the morphemes do not have clear boundaries. E.g., TOOK In took, it is not easy to separate which part stands for TAKE and which part stands for PAST. (i) To deal with such problems, Semantists may decide to redefine the term Word to mean Lexeme. The Lexeme is the abstract unit that underlies all the variants (Lyons, 1977; Hudson, 1995). For example the Lexeme: cry CRY underlies crying Cries cried all of which are manifestations of word forms of the Lexeme or notional word CRY.
Lexemes are what people look up in the Dictionary. Each Lexeme merits a separate entry or subentry.
Working with the term Lexeme, the Semantists can thus talk about the meaning of grammatical elements/categories such as TENSE, ASPECT, NUMBER and so on, hence avoiding the problem of separating meanings like those posited by words such as TOOK.
However, they are still left with the problems posed by compound words such as black mail, black board etc. How do we analyze their meanings now that:
- Some of the compound words have meaning which have nothing to with the meanings of the separate words. E.g., Black mail; hot dog; etc.
- others have meaning which can be related, e.g., black board; classroom
To analyze the meanings of compound words we need to first categorize them into two types/kinds: -Transparent words: those words whose meaning can be determined from the meanings of their constituent words. -Opaque words: those words whose meaning can NOT be determined from the meanings of their constituent words.
(ii) Also there are the Idioms. Finally we must notice, in looking for the unit of meaning – in relation to the word, that some groups of words must be taken together to establish meaning which is equivalent to that of one word. E.g., - Die = kick the bucket
- Get furious = fly off the handle
- reveal secrete = spill the beans An Idioms is a group of words or a sequences whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the constituent words themselves, as in: Red herring; Red tape Raining “cats and dogs‟ English just like other languages has plenty of Idioms whose meanings are equivalent to the meaning of a single word. It cannot be predicted for any given language whether a particular meaning will be expressed by a single word or by a sequence of words
Semantically Idioms are single units, but they are not single grammatical units like words. Or they do not function like single words grammatically. E.g., not taking – ed at the end to form the P ast Tense. It actually functions to some degree as normal sequence of grammatical structure ( eg. kick ed the bucket). A large number of idioms contain a verb and a noun. The verb may be inflected for TENSE eg., “ Flew off the handle” The nouns can never be inflected for number. Eg., We have “spilled the beans ” but never “spill the bean ” and “fly off the handle” but never “fly off the handles ”.
Other Syntactic restrictions are:
- Some idioms have passive forms, e.g.,
the law was laid down: > the beans have been spilled. But not > the bucket has been kicked.
The restrictions vary from idiom to idiom. Some are more restricted or frozen than others.
