06 Semantics
Learn how conventional word and sentence meanings interact with grammatical structure, reference, context, and truth-based relations.
Conventional meaning and context
concerns conventional meaning: how words and grammatical structures contribute to the meanings of phrases and sentences. It is closely related to , which considers how context and speaker intentions shape what an utterance communicates.
For example, Can you pass the salt? is literally a question about ability, but in ordinary conversation it is often used as a request. The request interpretation depends on context, not only on the sentence’s conventional meaning.
Word meaning and
A word’s , or denotation, is the set of things it applies to; its is the concept or criteria associated with it—roughly, what makes something count as the named thing. and are related but not identical.
Two expressions can refer to the same thing while presenting it differently. The morning star and the evening star, for instance, can refer to the planet Venus while conveying different ways of identifying it.
Relations between word meanings
Words participate in systematic Semantic relations that organize vocabulary and can support inferences about sentences.
connects words with similar or equivalent meanings in a particular use, as with begin and start. Exact synonyms are uncommon because words may differ in register, associations, or context.
is opposition in meaning. Hot and cold are gradable opposites; alive and dead are often treated as complementary opposites; buy and sell describe converse relations between participants in an event.
relates a more specific category to a more general one. A sparrow is a kind of bird, so sparrow is a hyponym of bird.
is a part–whole relation: a wheel is part of a bicycle.
occurs when one word has related senses, as head does in head of a person and head of a department. have the same form but unrelated meanings, as bank meaning a financial institution and bank meaning a river edge.
Because a sparrow is a kind of bird, Mina saw a sparrow entails Mina saw a bird.
How structure builds sentence meaning
The says that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and their arrangement. It helps explain how speakers understand sentences they have never heard before.
The sentences The dog chased the cat and The cat chased the dog use the same words, but their grammatical arrangements assign different roles. The subject is the chaser, and the object is the one chased; reversing the noun phrases therefore changes the sentence’s meaning. Word meanings alone are not enough to determine the interpretation.
Truth and ambiguity
In a simple truth-conditional approach, a declarative sentence describes a situation and is true when that situation fits the description. The dog chased the cat is true if the relevant dog performed a chasing event involving the relevant cat. Its specify what would have to be the case for it to be true.
A sentence can be ambiguous and have more than one interpretation. I saw her duck can describe seeing a bird belonging to her or seeing her lower her head.
Expressions and their referents
is the relation between a linguistic expression and what it picks out in a particular use. A proper name such as Ava may refer to a person, while a noun phrase such as that tree refers to an object when the speaker and listener can identify it.
Expressions such as I, here, and today depend especially on the utterance situation. I refers to the speaker, while the referent of today changes with the date of speaking. Context helps determine which entity is referred to, while the expression’s meaning provides guidance for identifying it.
and sentence relations
Sentence A entails sentence B if, whenever A is true, B must also be true. The puppy is sleeping entails The animal is sleeping because a puppy is an animal. The goes only one way: The animal is sleeping does not guarantee that the animal is a puppy.
One test for an is to combine the first sentence with a denial of the proposed . The puppy is sleeping, but the animal is not sleeping is contradictory. If two sentences entail each other, they have the same and are in that respect. cannot both be true in the same circumstances.
and cancellable inferences
Necessary truth-preserving relations differ from plausible but defeasible conclusions. Kai ate some of the cookies entails that Kai ate at least one cookie, but it does not entail that Kai did not eat all of them.
A listener may infer “not all” in context, but that inference can be cancelled: Kai ate some of the cookies—in fact, all of them is not contradictory. This cancellable inference is pragmatic rather than an .