LINGUISTICS(5)

1.6 Meaning as truth conditions (p.109)

Truth-conditional theory: Knowing the meaning of a sentence is the same as knowing the conditions under which the sentence is true or false. S is true if and only if P e.g.: Peter is married.

① There must be some individual called Peter; ② There is a social institution called marriage; ③ This individual is involved in this state of marriage.

Problem: How can we discuss the meaning of interrogatives疑问词 and imperatives祈使句?

2. Word meaning (p.110)

2.1 Sense感觉and reference引用

? Sense is defined in terms of relationships which hold between the linguistic elements

themselves (mostly words), it is concerned with intralinguistic relations.

? Reference or extension deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements

(words, sentences, etc.) and the non-linguistic world of experience (things, actions, events and qualities).

? Sense refers to the abstract properties of an entity; reference refers to the concrete entities

实体having these properties.

? We can say every word has a sense, but not every word has a reference.

? Grammatical words like but, if, and do not refer to anything. Words like God, ghost,

dragon refer to imaginary things, which have no reference.

? There is no absolute dividing line between what is in the world and what is in language. ? For Leech利奇, sense and reference mean the similar idea as connotation内涵and

denotation符号.

2.2 Leech: Seven types of meaning (p.111)

Conceptual概念上的/denotative指示的/ referential指示的meaning: concerns with the relationship between a word and the thing it refers to. (Central) Associative关联的meaning (2-6):

Connotative隐含的meaning: the properties of the entity a word refers to.

Social meaning (usually stylistic格式上的) : the social circumstances of language use (dialects, registers登记；暂存器).

Affective情感的meaning: the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writer conveyed传达by the word.

Reflected meaning: associated with another sense of the same expression.

Collocative meaning搭配意义: associated with words which tend to occur in the environment of another word.

Thematic meaning: determined by the order of the words in a sentence and the different prominence突出they each receive.

Q1: What is the difference of Connotation内涵and Denotation字面意思in philosophy? Can you explain this by the example of ?human‘?

A1: The denotation is any person such as John and Mary, the connotation is biped有两足的, featherless, rational, etc.

Q2: What is the difference between politician and statesman?

A2: The connotative meanings are different. The former is derogatory贬损的and the latter is favorable.

Q3: What is the difference between cast投掷, throw and chuck丢弃?

A3: The social meanings (stylistic meanings) are different. Cast is literary, throw is general and chuck is casual.

Q4: What is the reflected meaning of intercourse性交? A4: Sexual.

Q5: What is the collocative搭配的meaning of the word pretty in pretty girl/ boy/ woman/color? A5: It has such collocative meanings: beautiful/ charming/ graceful/ elegant. Q6: Which receives the thematic meaning in the following sentences? Mr. Smith donated the money.

The money was donated by Mr. Smith. A6: The underlined.

2.3 Semantic field语义场(p.117)

A set of words with an identifiable semantic connection. Set 1: cup, mug, wine, glass, tumbler, plastic cup, goblet Set 1 constitute组成a semantic field.

Sports: tennis, badminton, golf, soccer, basketball… Kinship亲属 terms: father, mother, brother, sister, uncle… Emotions: angry, happy, sad, afraid, depressed…

? The absence of a word in a particular place in a semantic field of a language is called

lexical gap.词汇空缺现象

? In English, there is no singular noun that covers both cow奶牛and bull公牛as horse

covers stallion种马and mare母马.

? We have brother versus sister, son versus daughter, but no separate lexemes for “male”

and “female” cousin.

2.4 Componential成分的analysis (p.118)

Componential analysis refers to an approach adopted by structural semanticists语义学者in describing the meaning of words or phrases. This approach is based on the belief that the total meaning of a word can be analyzed in terms of a number of distinct明显的elements or meaning components (called semantic features).

Componential analysis is often seen as a process aiming at breaking down the meaning of a word into its minimal distinctive有特色的features or properties, which are also called components部件by some linguists. One way of describing the components of a word is to use feature symbols, which are usually written in capitalized letters, with ―+‖ ―-‖ before them, plus sign符号indicates the presence of a certain property, and minus sign indicates the absence of it. e.g. man : + HUMAN + ADULT + MALE woman: + HUMAN + ADULT – MALE

boy: + HUMAN – ADULT + MALE girl: + HUMAN – ADULT – MALE father = PARENT (X,Y) & MALE (X) mother = PARENT (X,Y) & - MALE (X) take = CAUSE (X, (HAVE (X,Y))) give= CAUSE (X, (- HAVE (X,Y)))

? Advantages: by specifying the semantic features of certain words, we may better account

for sense relations.

Synonym同义词--- words having the same semantic components. Antonym反义词--- words having a contrasting component.

Hyponym下义词--- words having all semantic components of another.

? Disadvantages: It would be senseless to analyze the meaning of every word by breaking it

into its meaning components.

2.5 Sense relationships (p.120)

2.5.1 Synonymy同义词研究

Sameness or close similarity of meaning. Words that are close in meaning are called synonyms. e.g. buy and purchase, world and universe, brotherly and fraternal兄弟般的 母语词 外来词 外来词

? home domestic ? answer reply

? rise mount ascend Q: Why are there so many synonyms in English? Discuss the following difference: 1. Little Tom buys/ purchases a toy bear.

2. I’m thrifty. You are economical. And he is stingy吝啬的. 3. Autumn/ fall, flats/ apartments, underground, tube/ subway 4. It is a pretty little house. What a poor little boy! *It is a pretty small house. *What a poor small boy!

5. Strong coffee, powerful machine *Powerful coffee, *strong machine

So synonyms can differ in the aspects of style, connotations内涵, dialects, affective情感的meaning, collocative搭配的meaning.

2.5.2 Antonymy反义词组

oppositeness of meaning.Words that are opposite in meaning are antonyms. 3 types:

1. Gradable可分类的antonymy 2. Complementary互补的 antonymy 3. Converse交谈antonymy ①. Gradable antonymy:

The oppositeness of meaning that holds in more than one dimension维. They are gradable可分级的in the sense of more or less and there is a possibility to place an intermediate中间物between two antonyms.

long---short big---small rich---poor beautiful---ugly good---bad old---young hot---cold tall---short Characteristics of gradable antonymy:

1. gradable: the denial of one is not necessarily

the assertion断言of the other. Some intermediate forms exist.

2. They can be modified修改by VERY.

3. They may have comparative比较级or superlative最高级degrees.

4. Antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms. No absolute criterion标准

exists.

5. One member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term.

Q: Can we say ―How young are you‖?

A: No, there is a habit in it. In how old are you, old is unmarked, the usual, more often used. If something marked is used, it suggests something odd, unusual here. More often we use the

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