book excerptise:   a book unexamined is wasted paper

Frank Robert Palmer

Semantics

Palmer, Frank Robert;

Semantics

Cambridge University Press, 1981 2nd edn, 221 pages  [gbook]

ISBN 0521283760, 9780521283762

topics: |  linguistics | semantics

	  based on typed-up notes from first edition; later emended with
	  other info from 2nd edn.  pagenums : 1st ed 

Contents

Preface
Typographical conventions
Ch. 1: Introduction : The term "semantics"
       The word "meaning" 3
       1.2 Semantics and linguistics 5
       Utterance vs Sentence 8
       1.4 Historical semantics
       Irrelevance of etymology 12
       Philosophy and other disciplines 15
       Semantics and Logic 13
Ch. 2: Scope of Semantics - Naming
       meaning != denotation 20
       possible cultural relevance
       russell:-object-word-vs-dictionary-word-22
       Concepts 24
       2.3 Sense and Reference 29
       2.4 The word 32
       Sentence meaning: Literal vs Pragmatic 38
       Propositional semantics 42
Ch. 3: Context and Reference 44
       Linguistic relativity 44
       3.2 Excluding context 47
       Katz and Fodor: Arguments against context
       Situational context 51
       3.4 Behaviourism: It's all context
       Which Aspects of Context?
Ch. 4: Lexical semantics: fields and collocation
Ch. 5: Lexical semantics: sense relations
       Collocations - inapplicability of logic
Ch. 6: Semantics and Grammar
       Generative Semantics 22
       6.2 Grammatical categories 24
       6.3 Grammar vs Lexicon 130
       Semantically ill-formed sentences
       6.4 Grammatical Relations
       6.8: Interrogative / Imperative
Ch. 7: Utterance meaning
Ch. 8: Semantics and logic
References
Index.

Excerpts

1.1. The word "semantics"


semantics: relatively new term - French semantique is from 1893, coined from Greek by M. Breal's in 1893. The following year, the word was first used in English, in a paper read at the American Philological association in 1894. In both cases, the term was used to refer to the historical development of meaning rather than meaning per se.

M. Breal's 1897 (french) book, tr. 1900 as Semantics: studies in the science of meaning - is a superb little book (now neglected), which treated semantics as the 'science' of meaning, and was not primarily concerned with diachronic change. Yet the term did not catch on. The famous 1923 book by Ogden and Richards, The meaning of meaning, never uses the term, though it appears in an appendix by Malinowski. HG Wells used "significs" in The shape of things, others used semiotics or semiology.

At the same time, popular writing often uses semantics pejoratively - "Semantic manoeuvres at the Pentagon" refers to mobile manoeuvre being used to imply retreat. Similarly, "homelessness reduced to semantics" --> too narrow and interpretation of h.

A true story: An eminent US linguist [HL Mencken] was
asked by a strip-tease dancer to find an alternative for the word
strip-tease.  "I hope that the science of semantics can help the verbally
underprivileged members of my profession."  He suggested ecdysiast. p.2[/cvr]
   [This has become a word - from etymonline:
   H.L. Mencken's invented proper word for "strip-tease artist," 1940, from
   Gk. ekdysis "a stripping or casting off" (used scientifically with ref. to
   serpents shedding skin or crustacea molting), from ekdyein "to put off"
   (contrasted with endyo "to put on"), from ex- + dyo "sink, plunge, enter."]

The word "meaning" 3


"meaning" has many senses.
   - intend:  I mean to be there tomorrow
   - signifier of a sign: That cloud means thunder, or A red light means 'stop'.
   - simpler paraphrase: what does calligraphy mean? it means 'beautiful writing'
   	words to define other words; usually simpler words in the explanation.
   Thus, what does chat mean in French? cat, but the inverse is "what is
   French for cat, maybe because answer is no longer "simpler".  p.3

non-literal (pragmatic intent): "It wasn't what he said, but what he meant."
e.g. (p.4):

	`Why is a raven like a writing-desk?' [said the Hatter]
	`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've
   begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.
	`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said
   the March Hare.
	`Exactly so,' said Alice.
	`Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.
    	`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least at least I mean what I say
   that's the same thing, you know.'
	`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `Why, you might just as
   well say that `I see what I eat' is the same thing as `I eat what I
   see'!'  	-- Lewis Carroll

often words have other than 'literal' meanings - suggested with intonation
or gestures. [or poetry?]  e.g. the fall-rise tone in English - the
intonation falls and rises on the 'accented' word in a sentence - suggests
"but...".  She's very clever - may be positive in plain intonation, but
with rise-fall it becomes pejorative - she's not very honest, or not very
attractive, etc. similarly I think so - may be that I don't know, but
with a diff intonation that I am pretty sure.  That's very clever can
mean that's very stupid; and if I wink while saying that's mine - then it
probably isn't.

what we say often presupposes a lot - classic e.g.
	 When did you stop beating your wife?

1.2 Semantics and linguistics 5

Nearly all linguists have explicitly or implicitly assumed a model in which
semantics is at one 'end' and phonetics at the other, with grammar
somewhere in the middle...

de Saussure: signifiant (signifier) - for sounds of language, and
	signfiƩ (signified) for the meaning.  he unfortunately used the
	term SIGN for the association of these [today's "symbol"], but some
	of his followers, more reasonably, used sign for the signifier
	alone. 6

Lg does not always contain a 'message' or a piece of information - part of
its function is w social relationships. (even in animal communicn)
it has been convincingly argued that human lg differs in kind rather than in
degree from other 'languages' 6

[ messages can be described in terms of language, but how to describe
  language itself? ]
we cannot define meaning (the "message") independently of language. p.6

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. One essential requirement
is that it should be empirical.  What is meant by 'scientific' or
'empirical' is a matter of some debate.  Must be possible to test and
verify statements within it.

Difficult in semantics, for unlike phonetics, we cannot observe what is
being meant.

de saussure: langue (language) and parole ("speaking", indiv language w
errors); the distinction reappeared in Chomsky 1965:4 as COMPETENCE and
PERFORMANCE. (Chomsky differs greatly in what "competence" is, but the
distinction is the same).   Both for Chomsky and de Saussure, langue or
competence excludes accidental individual variations - some kind of
idealized system without any clear empirical
basis.  p.7-8  [see Bouquet, Simon, below]

can we make a similar distinction in semantics?  We can't be concerned with
completely idiosyncratic usage, e.g.
	`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
	`it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
There are variations - e.g. the poet's or the madman's - but neither would be
possible without the generalized "normal" patterns to make comparisons
with. 8

need to distinguish usual meaning of word w meaning in special
circumstances. --> distinction between semantics and PRAGMATICS. 8


Utterance vs Sentence 8


An UTTERANCE is an event in time - produced by some one under certain
circumstances.  A SENTENCE has no existence in time, but is part of the
linguistic system of a language.  The distinction is related to performance
and competence.

utterances as objects of study:
may be ok if you use a voice recording, but becomes v difficult if
transcribed - e.g. words are already sophisticated linguistic constructs
and not the result of direct observation.
Even if written in IPA it has already have acquired some of the
characteristics of a sentence.

It follows from this that semanticists will not be (and cannot really ever
be) concerned w the meaning of utterances but only with the meaning of
sentences.
[AM: however, surely they can consider the social context in which the
sentence was uttered!]

However, a lot of meaning lost when we throw out
the prosody and other paralinguistic aspects? ]

1.4 Historical semantics

Synchronic study of lg must precede diachronic - cannot study change unless
we know what it was like that is changing.  so too in semantics.  12


	      	e.g.     earlier meaning       explanation
narrowing:  	meat       food
widening: 	bitter	   biting
metonymy	jaw	   cheek     [nearness in space or time]
synecdoche	town	   fence     [whole for part or part / whole]
 		stove	   heated room
hyperbole	astound	   strike with thunder [stronger to weaker meaning]
litotes		kill	   torment       [weak to stronger meaning
degeneration	knave	   boy
elevation	knight	   boy


Irrelevance of etymology 12


The tanks of modern warfare are so called because of a decision in WW1 to
deceive the Germans into thinking that water-tanks were being despatched. 9
[but historical linguistics is not relevant here]

nice - once meant silly (Lat nescius, ignorant), and earlier it may have
been related to ne 'not', and sc- probably meaning cut, as in scissors,
but before that we do not know.  So etymology is not directly relevant to
semantics. 11

Synchronic study of lg must precede diachronic - cannot study change unless
we know what it was like that is changing.  so too in semantics.  12


Semantics and Logic 13


    Logical systems are self-coherent and internally consistent models of an
    idealized kind similar to those in mathematics and are not directly based
    upon, and therefore cannot be invalidated by, observations of natural
    language.  Consequently, the linguist should be suspicious of talk about
    the "logical basis of natural language", The logical systems of the
    logician are far neater and consistent than anything to be found in
    language.  They do not form the basis of language, but are a highly
    idealised form of a few of its characteristics.  13

Science vs the philosophy of science: The scientist may take for granted the
validity of his assumptions, his methods and his conclusions; the philosopher
of sci may question the whole basis on which he works.  Such a distinction
ought to be valid in linguistics, if the subject is in any sense scientific.
14
[Unfortunately, too little agreement on aims and nature, esp. of "semantics"]

also anthropologists, e.g. Malinowski on the role of context and situation.
Also of interest in linguistics, names for kinship structures.

Philosophy and other disciplines 15


psychologists:
    - Morris 1946: Signs, language and behaviour (Behaviourist)
    - Osgood, Suci Tannenbaum: Measurement of meaning
		semantic space = dimensions of meaning - binary
	Palmer is dismissive of Osgood - "less relevant" - "a 20 qs like quiz"
   		"tells us little about meaning in general." 17

psychology: problems comprehending sentences with [MIDDLE RECURSION]
	the boy the man the woman loved saw ran away
[the man whom the woman loved, saw the boy who ran away]
why is it simpler to analyze:
	The question the girl the dog bit answered was complex.
No grammatical reason why one should be more difficult than the other,
[but possibly frequentist associations may reveal some of it.] 14-5 1st ed

Information theory - more promising.
   Efficient system will have minimum redundancy.
   Great deal of redundancy in lg - e.g. can read with the bottom half of
	printed line covered.
   But redundancy is needeed where there is noise. e.g. discrepancy between
	speaker's and listener's understanding.

The human speaker does not merely transmit the message, he also creates it
- and we cannot even begin to talk about information in this sense
precisely because we cannot quantify or specify precisely what it is that
is being 'transmitted'. 18

Austin: performatives and speech acts
Strawson: presupposition
Grice: implicatures

--- BOUQUET, SIMON: Saussure's unfinished semantics

manuscripts discovered in the Saussure family home in Geneva, attacks the
notions of
the misunderstanding which initially dogged the school founded by
F. Bopp was to give languages, a body, an imaginary existence outside
speaking individuals.  Abstraction, within langue, even when appropriately
applied, is in practice only of limited use - is a logical process... while
language (langage) is both the application and the constant generator of
the language system (langue), the act of language is to langue both its
application and its sole origin.  ELG:129

This way of thinking highlights Saussure's distance from the
logical-grammatical paradigm in language science.  [The last sentence in CGL
is more due to Bally and Sechehaye, than Saussure: ]  The true and unique
object of linguistics is language studied in and for itself.  This last
sentence of the Cours is not only apocryphal, it is also completely
contradictory.  [this is a phrase not to be found in the Geneva lecture, but
from Bopp 1816]

In the ms ELG:

   The individual remains to be dealt with, because only the common effort of
   all individuals can create general phenomena.  It is thus necessary to
   take a look at the working of language in the individual. CLG/E 1.65.429.5

also:
Singh, Prem, 1992.  Saussure and the Indic connection, In RN Srivastava,
ed. Language and Text: studies in honour of R. Kalkar, Delhi, Kalinga publ,
43-50.

Vajpeyi, A. 1997. Contemporary linguistic theorizing and Sanskrit. Paper
	presented at South Asian Language Analysis XVIII Roundtable, January
	1997, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Ch 2: Scope of Semantics - Naming


Meaning as denotation - Plato Cratylus: words "stand for" something in the
world.  Words are labels for things.  Child learns names by a process of
naming.

Meaning of larger constructs (expressions) [Lyons, Semantics, 1977 2vols:206-9]
Denotation : the class of persons, things etc. generally represented by the
	expression
Reference: the actual person, thing being referred to in a specific context

This view appears to be limited to nouns.  Maybe colours (adjectives).  But
not at all plausible even for adj like "attractive", useful, relevant
difficult, plausible.  18

With a noun we can often draw a picture of the object denoted.  But this is
difficult, if not impossible, with verbs.
even nouns like goblin, unicorn, fairy etc - for objects that don't exist

Consider the verb "run", and an attempt to illustrate what it denotes with a
picture of running (maybe a moving picture).  Difficulty: picture has a boy,
and has him running - hard to distinguish the boy and "what he is doing".  19


meaning != denotation 20


Morning star / evening star
In Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado,
  First Lord of the treasury
  Lord Chief Justice
  Commander in Chief
  Lord High admiral
  Master of the Buck Hounds
are all names for Pooh-Bah.  20
[same holds for "His Holiness" and "the Pope" and "Benedict XVI"]

even when names are limited to visible objects, they may represent a whole
lot of rather different objects.

[Hence - meaning must be based on function]

"In the world of experience, objects are not clearly grouped together ready,
so to speak, to be labelled with a single word.
Realist view: all things called by the name have some common property
Nominalist:  nothing is common except for the name. [this radical view is of
	course false, chairs can't be called mountains]

possible cultural relevance-


Malinowski (1923, The Problem of meaning in primitive lgs, supplem to Ogden
	and Richards 1923/1949:299-300)

was troubled by the fact that he was unable to produce satisfactory
translations for the Trobriand Islanders' speech (text) he had recorded.
e.g.  boast by canoeist: "We-run front-wood ourselves... we-turn we-see
companion-ours he-runs rear-wood."

This, Malinowslki argued (:300-01), made sense only if
the utterance was seen in the context [--> Behaviourism].
lg is not a "mirror of reflected thought", or a "counteersign of thought",
but a "mode of action".  Expressions such as "How do you do" or "Ah there you
are" - more to establish a common sentiment than any semantic substance.
Also talk about the weather or family 50-51
     --> PHATIC COMMUNION - ony social, no semantics 52

Eskimo: have four words for "snow" (1911:20): "snow on the ground", "falling
	snow", "drifting snow", and "snowdrift".  (Boas 1911, Intro to Hbk of
	Am Ind Lgs :20)
Hopi: only one word for "flier" - be it insect or aeroplane (Whorf 1956:210)
      p.21

Bloomfield: Salt is "NaCl" - is wrong.  It is what appears on our tables,
	    with pepper and mustard, and is no less salt if it is not exactly
	    NaCL [AM: e.g. composition may have other elements, Mg or Iodine]

Russell: Object word vs Dictionary word 22


Some words refer to objects and are learned as labels, while others are
learned as definitions based on them - OSTENSIVE DEFINITIONS.
 (Russell 1940 An inq into meaning and truth:25,66 repr. 1962:23,63).  p.22

Wittgenstein (1953:16): I must be a master of lg to understand an ostensive
definition."

The child does not simply learn labels - else he would not be able to handle
all these complexities.
     We shall not solve problems of semantics by looking at a child learning
     lg, for an understanding of what he does raises precisely the same
     problems as those of understanding what adults do in their normal
     speech.  23


Concepts 24


Ogden & Richards 1923/1949:11 : the concept (thought or reference) is in a
relation with the symbol, and also the actual referent;
Triangular relationship - but symbol and referent are connected by dashed
	line. 24

What is precisely the "associative bond" of Saussure, or the link between
O&R's symbol and concept?

semantics as "association in the mind".
    The difficulty w this view is that it really says nothing at all. 26
    [becomes a circular definition, a tautology]
	[AM: results from our inadequacy in understanding the mechanism in
	the mind, until that's understood, philosophizing becomes only hot
	air]

nothing is gained by moving meaning one step back to the brain - the ghost in
the machine / homunculus argument. 27

Dualism is encouraged by the term "meaning" itself.

Wittgenstein (1953:31):
    for a large class of words... the meaning of a word is its use in lg.'
not a very helpful remark, since "use in lg" is just as unclear.  But still,
has value; we can now investigate "use".   29


Sense and Reference


Reference: what the expr refers to in the non-linguistic world of experience
Sense: relationships that hold between the lg elements (mostly the words)
	themselves

Would appear that reference is the key part of semantics.
But - sense relations are also common - e.g.
   sex differences (older grammars in English)
     - ewe / ram
     - cow/bull; mare/stallion - were thought to be grammatical, and
       		 not lexical (since related to gender).  p.30
also father/son; duck/duckling; buy/sell;
Dictionary : concerned primarily w sense relations

there may be two kinds of semantics - one that relates to non-linguistic
entities, and the others (as in dictionaries, with their unsystematic
definitions) - intra-linguistic.

Bierwisch (1970:167) says that a semantic theory must explain sentences like:

1. His typewriter has bad intentions
2. My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor
3. John was looking for the glasses.
4a. The needle is too short
 b. The needle is not long enough  [is it a paraphrase?]
6a. How long was Archibald in Monte Carlo?
 b. He was there for some time [presupposed by "a")

123 are : anomalous, contradictory, ambiguous

Katz and Fodor 1963:176
  A semantic theory describes and explains the interpretive ability of
  speakers; by accounting for their performance in determining the number of
  readings of a sentence; by detecting semantic anomalies; by deciding upon
  paraphrase relations between sentences; and by marking every other semantic
  property or relation tha plays a role in this ability."

Notably, the list of abilities (in later work, Katz:1972 has fifteen such
relations), does not include the ability to relate the sentences to the world
of experience; and indeed K&F explicitly exclude from a semantic theory any
reference to the context.

2.4 The word 32


"Boys like to play"
what is the meaning of "to"?

Henry Sweet 1891, distinguished "full" words (tree, sing, blue, gently) from
"form" words (the, of, and).  The form words are not normal dictionary words
and have only grammatical meaning.

word may be defined in terms of stress - only one main stress -
e.g. in spoken lg, can distinguish "blackbird" from "black bird" 33
(so does "shoe-horn" or "shoe polish")
Bloomfield 1933: "word is the minimum free form" in isolation; the, is, by do
not appear in isolation (but then, maybe, neither do any others).

Bloomfield: morphemes as units of meaning, e.g. "-berry" in blackberry or
"-y" in Johnny.
Later linguists: "loved" = love + -d = adore + past.  (but what of "took")

LEXEME: love and loved are under the same dictionary heading;  unit

Bloomfield: status of "cran-" in cranberry - no indep meaning, and not
occurring in any other words.  (for that matter, straw- and goose- +berry)
greenfinch bullfinch and chaffinch: green- is a colour, bull- is a word but
not relate-able to bullfinch; and chaffinch no meaning at all).

may be PHONAESTHETIC - initial cluster of consonants gives an indication of
meaning of a speccial kind.

e.g. many words with "sl-" are "slippery" in some sense - slide, slip,
slither, slush, sluice, sludge etc. often pejorative - slatterns, slut,
slang, sly, sloppy, slovenly. 35

ending in -ump often refers to roundish mass : plump, chump, rump hump lump
bump stump, perhaps even dump and mumps.  35

Ullman 1962: transparent vs opaque words, "male giraffe" vs "stallion"
doorman vs axe.  But does a scredriver "drive" screws?  spanner - obsolete
sense of span.

heavy smoker = "heavy smoke"+er, not heavy+smoker; similarly "good singer",
"criminal lawyer" etc.

Sentence meaning: Literal vs Pragmatic 38

Sentence literal meaning - based on lexemes + grammatical structure
(but whether "actual Surface structure" or " abstract Deep structure" is a
matter of some debate)
vs pragmatic meaning - e.g. "there's a bull in that field" - has
a direct, literal, meaning, but it may also be a warning.

Other kinds of meaning beyond lexemes + grammar:

1. prosody (intonation, stress, rhythm) + paralinguistic aspects: (gestures,
   facial expressions etc)
2. emphasis - i SAW john this morning; i saw JOHN this momrning; i saw john
   this MORNING
3. speech acts: warn, threaten, promise, "there's a bull in the field" 39
4. not saying the most relevant information may convey alternate meanings -
   e.g. "he's a nice man" may suggest that he's not a very good at his job.
5. presuppositions - e.g. "have you stopped beating your wife?" is much more
   than a question.  "Stop lying" means lying (or any activity) was going on.
   similarly NPs imply the existence of the object.  e.g. "King of france"
6. social relations - degree of politeness: Shut up, Be quiet, Would you pls
   be quiet, Would you keep yr voice down a little please?
   good morning, weather talk, much of "small talk".  39-40

Lyons 1977: distinguishes sentence meaning (lexemes+grammar) from utterance
meaning.  While problematic, will retain the sense of "utterance meaning" in
ch.7.

Propositional semantics 42


basic unit of semantics is not the sentence but the proposition.  but
sentence semantics is conditional, whereas propositional semantics is either
T or F.  e.g. "I was there yesterday" depends on I, there, yesterday and has
no fixed T/F value.   Also, same grammatical structure - e.g. "every boy loves
a girl", may have two propositions, with differing T/F consequences.

  There are, however, grave difficulties in restricting semantics to
  propositions. 42

Restricted to statements, even questions and commands are excluded.  Also
modal statements - "John may be in his office" are hard to handle.

Also, indexicals (or deictics) may not be resolvable logically - i.e. without
invoking semantics itself.

3 Context and Reference 44


REFERENCE: relation between lg and experience
SENSE: meaning relations within language

Linguistic relativity 44

how we see the world depends to some extent on the lg we use.
Malinowski: to the native the world appears mostly "undifferentiated".  They
have names for only those things that stand out - those that are relevant to
them. 44

Sapir [1929/1940:160]:
   [the world we live in] is to a large extent unconsciously built up on te
   lg habits of the group. 45
expanded by Whorf : we are unaware of the bkgd character of our lg, just as
   we are unaware of the presence of air until we begin to choke.  comparing
   lgs leads us to realize that we "dissect nature along lines laid down by
   our native languages".  This led him to a "new principle of relativity
   which holds that All observers are not led by the same physical evidence
   to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds
   are similar or in some way can be calibrated." [1956:214, article "Science
   and linguistics"]

Hopi lg does not have tenses, only what is subjective and objective, so Whorf
claimed that the Hopi have no notion of time.  ... It can be argued that
English has only two tenses, pres & past, with everything else involving aux
verbs - was loving, will love, etc. Also, "past" tense, defined this ay is
not limited to past time, but also for unreality, as in "I wish I went there
every day."  Joos 1964 suggests that Engl doesn't really have a past tense,
but only one "remote" tense, rather similar to the Hopi.
Hence if Engl had been an Am Indian lg, it could have been used
as an example of a lg in which time relations are not distinguished. 47

In spite of objections, the S-W hypothesis serves a useful reminder that the
categories employ do not simply "exist" in experience.  e.g. calf, heifer,
cow, intermed stage terms : heiver, steer, colt, filly, teg (also, infant,
toddler, child, teenager, adult, senior)

It would be very diff to recognize the  worldly counterparts of come/go,
bring/take. 47

3.2 Excluding context 47


Main reason may be: great theoretical and practical difficulty

Reasons argued: meaning indep of context must be known before using it in a
	context.  But this begs the q.  What does a meaning without context
	mean?  presumably in another sentence of similar meaning.  But if we
	can identify two sentences of similar meaning, it does not mean that
	we have identified some abstract entity called "meaning".  to the
	contrary, it can be argued that knowing two sentences are similar in
	meaning --> they can be used in similar contexts. 48

Context may be infinite - so how can we definte semantics in terms of
context? Bloomfield despaired about any satisfactory treatment of semantics.
can avoid the problem by considering only "tight" lexical relations like
"bachelor/unmarried" or "short/long" but this provides too narrow a sem
theory.

Bierwisch: My typewriter has bad intentions 50/51  - may have many meanings,
e.g. astronomer's glasses

Katz and Fodor: Arguments against context


"The bill is large" is ambiguous, but can be disambiguated if followed by
  "...but need not be paid".  This disambiguation, K&F argue, is proper for
  semantics.
However, this example is not:

Shall we take the junior back to the zoo?
Shall we take the bus back to the zoo?
Shall we take the lion back to the zoo?

But the knowlege needed for these is no different than with "bill".  p.50

Situational context 51


Malinowsky, Trobriand Islands, S Pacific:
  canoeist's boast: We-run front-wood ourselves... we-turn we-see
  companion-ours he-runs rear-wood.' 1923/1949:300-I
This made sense only if the utterance was seen in context, that wood means
  paddle.  Lg is a "mode of action".

3.4 Behaviourism: It's all context

Malinowski and Firth : descr of lg cannot be complete w.o some reference to
	the cultural context
Behaviourism: meaning is totally accounted for by context - Bloomfield.

Bloomfield: the only useful generalizations abt language are the 'inductive'
generalizations.
meaning of a linguistic form: "the situation iin which the speaker utters it
	   and the response it calls forth in the hearer."
e.g. Jill is hungry, and asks Jack to get an apple that's visible.
If there was no Jack, the sight of the apple would have induced Jill to get
it (S-->R).  But since Jack is there, the R is linguistic and not action, so
that we now have S-->R'(lang)...[Jack hears]S' --> R.

Thus meaning, for Bloomfield, consists of the relation between speech (shown
as R'...S') and the events S and R which bracket it.

Bloomfield took great pains to contrast this mechanistic, observable theory
to "mentalistic" theories that posited thoughts, concepts, images, feelings,
etc.   While he despised mentalists, his own argument involved "predisposing
factors" which depended on the entire life histories of the agents (is Jack
well-disposed towards Jill?) - which is just as circular an argument.

Bloomfield's faith in scientific definition: e.g. Salt = NaCl.  This is in
no way related to human lg.  58

Skinner 1957 attempted to clear up the problem of the "predisposing
factors".  1) Lg behaviour is in principle no diff from rats in a lab; 2)
this behav can be explained in terms of observable events, without reference
to internal structure.  Stimulus, response and REINFORCEMENT are key.

part of Chomsky's argument against this is to consider looking at a picture
and saying "Dutch".  This could be explained by the long history of the
participants, but that cannot constitute an explanation.  The responses are
not predictable from the stimuli.

early learning has behaviourist elements - baby makes noise, milk comes. But
the child rapidly outgrows this explanation for language.

Which Aspects of Context?


deictics

- participants (I, we, you etc.

- spatial (here, there etc.

In Malagasy the terms ety and aty may be glossed as 'here' and 'there':
Ety/Aty ny tranony: His house is here/there.   But the distinction depends on
whether or not the house is visible to the speaker [Keenan:1971:45]

Come and Go [Fillmore:1960]:
direction towards speaker / hearer - Come to me; I'll come to you.
	  He came to see me in London
habitual locus of speaker/hearer:
   Come to my office (though I shan't be there); I went to your house
   [Here "go" is also possible. ] 61

- temporal: now, then, yesterday, tense

power relations in language - politeness.
In French, the tu / vous distinction is not there in father-son relations
[What do they say, then? tu, or vous?]


Collocations - inapplicability of logic

   (chapter 6 added in second edition: Meaning and the Sentence)

English has many terms for rotten and bad
rancid occurs with bacon and butter and addled with brains and
eggs; milk is never rancid but only sour.  95

"pretty child" and "buxom neighbour" normally refer to females.

exceptional weather = abnormal weather, but
exceptional child != abnormal child -> both have special connotations

It is, or should be, clear that the study of semantics is not advanced by
being 'reduced' to logic.  113

Ch.6: Semantics and Grammar

		    (ch. 7 in new edition)
Grammar and semantics are often thought of as separate levels of
linguistics.  [But] grammatical categories often have meaning...

Most of the traditional grammarians assumed that gramm categories are
essentially semantic.  Nouns = names of thing, gender is concerned with sex,
while plural simply meant 'more than one'

On the other hand, many linguists have argued that grammar must be kept
distinct from semantics and that grammatical categories must be wholly
defined in terms of the FORM of the language, the actually observable
features.  One of the earliest statements is Sapir 1921.  Bloomfield 1933: We
must be 'scientific' and study of meaning was a weak point in linguistic
theory; hence formal features, not meaning, shd be the starting point of a
linguistic discussion.  - 118

Two good arguments for FORMAL GRAMMAR, i.e., excluding meaning from grammar.

First argument: meaning is often very favue and meaning categories are not
   easily delineated.  What might seem to be obv semantic categories are
   often in fact definable only in terms of formal features of a lg (to this
   extent Whorf may have been right).  If then, gramm categories are given
   semantic definitions, the definitions are circular.  An excellent example:
   Noun = word used for naming anything.  What is anything?  The things that
   can be named, incl., in English, fire, speed, place, intelligence,
   suffering, etc. Why is "redness" a name of a thing, whereas "red" is not?
   Similarly, why does "rain" refer to a thing, while "It's raining" does
   not?  It is reported that there are lgs in which words for 'river',
   'spring' etc are essentially verbs, so a literal transl wd be "It's
   rivering" rather than "There's a river".  So the painfully simple answer
   is that 'things' are what are designated by Ns.

Second argument: Even where we can define sem and gramm categories indep,
   they often do not coincide.  One of the best known examples is that of
   wheat and oats, where there is a clear lack of corresp between
   grammatical number with quantity.  In terms of 'one' and 'more than one'
   these can't be distinguished, but "wheat is in the barn" "oats are on the
   table" --> grammatical.  Similarly, hair is singular in English, but
   French (cheveux) and Italian have plural nouns.  Similarly, gender and sex
   are indep in German [also Hindi], German for young woman, M\"adchen and
   Fraulein are neuter, while the feminine la sentinelle in French may
   refer to a strapping male.  In English, tense is not directly related to
   time since past tense is used for future e.g. If he came tomorrow...

Hence the basic gramm categs of a lg have to be establ indep of their
meaning.  However, once we hv defined the formal categs of grammar, we find
that there is some correlation between gender and sex, tense and time, gramm
number and enumeration, though this correln will never be exact.  In French,
Ns referring to fem are always fem, though some fem Ns may refer to males,
and in English ONE of the functions of tense is to refer to time.  Indeed it
is only because of these correlations that the labels 'gender', 'tense', etc
have any usefulness at all...

But hard to draw a distinguishing line between grammar and semantics ... the
more detail we consider grammar, the closer the correlation w semantics.
e.g.
	* John is seeming happy
we could say this is ungramm on the grounds that the v seem does not occur
in the progressive (continuous) form is seeming.  But is this in fact a
gramm rule or is it the case that for semantic reasons J cannot be in a
continuous state of seeming?  No clear answer.  Similarly,
	* John is having gone there
	* John continued having gone there
Little doubt that the first is ruled out grammatically by a simple rule that
puts aux have before aux be and so allows only _John has been going
there_.  But it is not clear whether we ought to say that there is a gramm
rule that prevents continue from being followed by auxiliary have, or
whether we shd say it makes little sense semantically.

Hence,
1. Though we can, and must, set up formal categories, they will be found to
	have some correlation, but not one-to-one with semantics.
2. Difficult borderline area.
also:
3. Some of the categs seem to be found in all languages; as far as we know,
   there is no lg that does not distinguish in some way between N and V, even
   though some may not have diff word-classes (parts of speech).  Some of the
   more imp semantic categs, e.g. relating to sex, quantity, time, are found
   in many gramm systems.  Sim between lgs support some kind of universalist
   view.

The controversy abt semantics and formal grammar was revived between in terms
of 'interpretive' and 'generative' semantics within
tranformnational-generative-grammar.  Chomsky 1965p.16 had argued that there
is a syntactic [deep structure] and that it is at this level we can relate
active and passive sentences, or Question forms.  The diff in the order of
the words (as well as other differences) is a matter of their [surface
structure].

deep structure also distinguishes John is eager to please from
John is easy to please : John is the 'deep subject' of please in 1 and
the object of please in 2; also while J is the subject of is in 1, the
subj of is in 2 is "please John"

Part of the syntax is concerned w tranformation rules that convert deep
structures into surface structures.  Essential that given the DS, these rules
automatically generate the correct SS.  The DS is generated by the BASE which
consists of two components: CATEGORIAL COMPONENT (the entire grammatical
apparatus) and the LEXICON (inventory of lexical items).

DS: - enables generation of surface structure, e.g. To oversimplify,
      [Passive] marker will generate Piano played by J while its absence
      generates J played the piano, all else being same.  same DS with Q
      will generate Was piano played by J?

    - can generate the semantics

Generative Semantics 122

However, others argued that if there is a deep structure, it must be much
deeper, so deep in fact that it is essentially semantic and not syntactic.
In this sense semantics is not interpretive, but generative.
One of the many complex arguments: the active/passive relationship seems to
break down with
      Many men read few books  vs
      Few books are read by many men
which are clearly diff in meaning.  To anal such sentences as having same DS
except the [Passive] marker, is clearly not satisfactory.  Lakoff 1971
p.238-45 argues that the DS must be the sem structures, which specify the
meanings.  A rather diff argument [Lakoff 1968] suggests that
	Seymour sliced the salami with a knife
shd be related to
	Seymour used a knife to slice the salami
and that they have essentially the same DSs.  Fillmore's case theory is also
within generative semantics.  123

Gen Semantics was doomed to failure, because of the impossibility of using
semantics as a basis for grammar.  But Chomsky is still maintains that syntax
is AUTONOMOUS - i.e. indep of semantics [Chomsky 1977 p. 36-9]. 124

6.2 Grammatical categories 124


GENDER: Fr and German may have historical reasons for some idiosyncracies
	that were conventionalized... English has no gender except he,
	she, it.  Latter can be applied to a dog of unknown gender, but
	not to indeterminate-sex humans.  they, them, their can be used
	- e.g. has anyone lost their hat? If anyone comes tell them to go away._
	This is frowned upon by some grammarians.  For babies,
	sometimes it is used, but not politically wise.

	Swahili: animates, small things, and big things, each marked by
	appropriate prefix and requiring agreement with adjs and verbs.
	(etymologyically, gender is not related to sex, but merely means
	'kind'; as sex took on erotic qualities in 20th c. English,
	gender came to be used, often in feminist writing, for biol
	qualities etc., 1963+) `

	But of course, semantic distinctions are impure for all such classes
	- e.g. Bloomfield: Algonquin lg have animate/inanim distinction, but
	"kettle" and "raspberry" are animate, though "strawberry" is
	inanimate.

NUMBER: Many lgs have number system, but many in SE Asia or Africa do not.

	Similarly for number.  What is the semantic importance of "one" vs
	"more than one" not clear.  Also classic Sanskrit, Greek Arabic had
	also "dual".  Fijian and Tigre (Ethiopia) also distinguish little
	plurals and big plurrals.
	No "natural" numerical classes to be found that may be expected to
	crop up in most languages.

COUNT/MASS NOUNS:  English clearly makes this distinction, though grammar
	books often ignore it.
	count nouns: cat, book; take "a __" in singular
	mass nouns: butter, petrol. "*a butter"; "some butter" " butter is"
	  cake, fish --> belong to both classes.

	no good justification why butter is a mass noun but jelly can be
	count as well as mass.  Why can we refer to a single mass of jelly as
	a jelly but not to a mass of butter as a butter?
	Again, while cake can be both mass and count, bread is only
	mass.  [in olden times, no sliced bread?]

	can interchange:
	a butter, a petrol = a type of butter or petrol;
	a coffee, a beer =   cup of coffee; glass of beer
	chicken is white meat; The chinese eat dog : mass N

PLURAL:  mass Ns are closer to plurals, e.g. in Bilin, the word for water is a
	plural.
	English: scissors, trousers, tongs etc - formally plural, but
		countable.
	pronouns - I, we, 2P you, 3P he she it they: combination of deictic
	categ, gender, and 1,2, or 3P = speaker, hearer, non-participant.

	problematic: 1st person plural: (We in English)
	  rare for there to be several speakers. - more often refers to both
	  speaker and hearer, or speaker + non-participant
	Similarly, 2P pl - you - may refer to hearer pl or to
	  hearer+non-participant.
	rule for the pron plural: determined by the highest ranking person
	  involved, and 1p > 2p > 3p
	some lgs: distinctive forms for "I and you" or "I and he/she"
	     	  sometimes pl forms used for politeness [German sie?]

ARTICLE: (mainly for English)
	definite article the: single identifiable item in either lg or
	non-lg context; or the most familiar ("the govt" = of our country),
	"the garden" = our garden.  But in context, may refer to other govts
	or gardens or moons.

	if item becomes uniquely identifiable, article may be dropped.
	E.g. Parliament not the parliament; similarly bank rate.

	idiosyncracies: rivers take articles, but cities do not.

Fries 1952: proposes grammar w four parts of speech: N V Adj Adv (though he
	doesn't use these terms) - along with 145 sets of "function words".
	The Fn words are exemplified by :
		the, may, not, very, and, at, do, there, why, although, oh,
		yes, listen! please, let's

The Engl conjunctions after, when, while, if, if translated into
	Bilin (Ethiopian Cushitic lg) will be inflected on the verb.
Finnish has complex case system; not only nom, acc, ablative etc, but also
	elative (out of), illative (into), adessive (on), essive (as).

6.3 Grammar vs Lexicon 130


GRAMMAR vs LEXICON : often posed in terms of whether deviant sentences are
	ruled out because of grammar or lexicon.  e.g.
	* The boys is in the garden - violates only one grammar rule
	* Been a when I tomato - violates what?
	In contrast:
	* The water is fragile : semantic violation

Semantically ill-formed sentences

arguments for separation: some sentences can be clearly grammatical, but
	lexically meaningless (e.g. Chomskys C G I S F).  Incidentally,
	Carnap had made a similar point using Engl syntax but nonsense words:
	Pirots karulize elastically (1937:p.2).

Grammar must also argue for illegitimacy of sentences like C G I S F.
Some linguists believe that a formal grammar can rule out such COLLOCATIONAL
possibilities also; [Joos 1950, 1958:356] argues that all the collocationjal
possibilities of a word would be suff to characterize it linguistically.  132

Even Chomsky (1965:95ff) attempts to handle collocational possibilities
within grammar, ruling out sentences like
		*The idea cut the tree,
		*I drank the bread, etc.
These are diff from other invalid Ss like
		*He elapsed the man
(elapse is intransitive, takes no object).  Chomsky proposes that a
SELECTIONAL RESTRICTION mechanism similar to the latter class can be used
for the former - cut would require a 'concrete' subject, and drink a
'liquid' object.

But this argument is unsatisfactory.
1. limitless num of components needed - all relevant information must be
	included in the classes --> infinite
2. fails to account for legimtimate uses where selectional restrictions are
	violated - e.g. hypothetical : John thought we could drink bread,
	or with negation: You can't drink bread.

Questions the justification for attempting this even, by introspection "as
native speakers", our reactions to these classes of errors is different.
But there are Ss which are illegit, but the violation cannot be clearly
marked as gramm or lexical.

e.g. The dog scattered :  scatter normally occurs w plurals or collective
	Ns: (The dogs/herd scattered).  So the violation appears
	grammatical.  However, imagine a dog that
	can break itself up magically and scatter over an area?  This would
	be permitted, but this time on lexical grounds.  But should we not
	say The dog scattered itself even in this situation?

6.4 Grammatical Relations

"sleep in" functions as a unit - The bed's not been slept in.

Is the [deep subject] the 'doer' or 'actor and the deep object the 'sufferer'
(or patient)?
problem w verbs that are not of action but of state: I like ice cream or
I saw the boys.  More so, e.g. from Halliday 1970:147
   	General Leathwell won the battle
but what did GL do? fire guns, kill enemy, etc?  Or did he quietly sit in HQ
and let the troops do the work?  Was he an 'actor' or 'supervisor'?

RELATIONAL GRAMMAR: linguists have argued for such structures (not using the
	   term DS/SS) as universal.

Passive transformation:
Some lgs do not move the NPs at all - e.g. Hindi [Johnson 1974:271)
	rAm ne moTer chAlAi (Ram drove the car)
	rAm se moTar chAlAi gai (The car was driven by Ram)
It is only in terms of Subj and Obj that we can make any general, universal
statement about passive and active; in all cases, the obj in the active voice
becomes the subj in the passive

So notions such as subj and obj appear to be useful in many lgs.
Problem:  Ergative lgs like Basque or Eskimo.
	  'Subj' of intransitive and 'object' of transitive are in the same
	  (nominative or absolutive) case, while 'subj' of transitive is
	  ergative.  (Subj and obj in quotes because they may not be approp to
	  these lgs).  example from Basque

Transitive as CAUSATIVE:
marked in some lgs like Tigrinya (Ethiopia)
Engl trans and intrans cook are handled by cuire and faire cuire.
Engl has some historical causatives - e.g. He felled the tree --> caused it
	to fall.

Some linguists have argued for the transitive distinction being looked at in
terms of causativity.  John rang the bell = 'J caused the bell to ring'.
1. But diff between semantic analysis of Engl and formal features in Tigrinya
   or French
2. Lgs have causatives for transitive vs as well - e.g. Tigrinya: sabbare
   he broke (something) and asbare he cause (someone) to break (sthing).
   Both Fr and Ti [and Hindi, but not Beng] wd translate Engl show as
   'caused (someone) to see'.
also - what can be a causative analysis for John hit Bill?  (John caused
	Bill to be hit) 139

6.5 Components and the sentence

DERIVING SEMANTICS (Katz/Fodor) 140
worth looking at because no one else has made such a clear and detailed
proposal [pre-Montague]
set of PROJECTION RULES that combine (AMALGAMATE) meanings (PATHS)
example of K/F:
	the man hit the colorful ball
"colorful ball":
colorful has paths for marking an actual colour, or for the colourful
	nature of an aesthetic object (evaluative)
ball has three paths - one as the social activity [dance?], the other with
	as (phys object) but distinguished by [having globular shape) and
	[solid missile for projection by engine of war] (cannon ball).

But all amalgamations wd not work, e.g. aesth object marker would not bind w
phys object (Palmer washes his hands off with the factual accuracy of this
argument, saying let's go with the argument).  So there are only four
combinations - social dance is colourful, or has a colour, or phys ballx2 has
a colour.

hit two paths: colliding with, or striking phys object.

Again this rules out the dance, so we are left w four readings:
      [colliding / striking] a [ball / cannonball] that has colour

Problems w such rules.  E.g. pregnant would be marked [-male] but how to
permit pregnant horse where the latter is not marked for gender?
Similarly, pretty child, buxom neighbour, etc.
can resolve with what [Weinrich 1966:429-32] calls "transfer feature" -
transferring a feature to another word.  But not simple.

6.6 Predicates and arguments


In a S the V is often best seen as a relational feature - active/passive can
be treated as relational opposites [5.5].

Analysis in relational terms seems to offer a far more satisf solution to the
problem of sentence meaning than componential analysis.  In essence such
analysis will have much in common w predicate calculus.

walk: W(x)
love: L(x,y)
give: G(x,y,z)

Then can define relations e.g. father (x,y) as 'parent of' and +male, as
	father (x,y) := parent(x,y) ^ male (x)

Predicate calculus permits SUBORDINATION - where a whole phrase acts as an
argument - e.g. Fred thinks that John loves Mary where J l M is acting as a
phrasal argument to [think]:
	[think] (x, [love](y,z))

causal interpretation of transitives:
	Killed (J,M) --> [cause](x, [become] (y, [~alive](y)))

These can be mapped to trees.
Generative semanticists argued that such trees were in fact its deep
structure.  e.g. I almost killed him  - almost can qualify cause (shot
at, but missed) become (recovered) or ~alive (shot him, and he was near
dead).  (last two: distinguishes "nearly became dead"  from "became near dead")

However, John killed Mary is not identical w _J caused M to become not
alive_.

6.7 Case Grammar


Case grammar was proposed by Fillmore as one of the arguments in favour of
generative semantics, but is best understood as a version of an analysis in
terms of predicates and arguments, w emphasis on the function of the
arguments.

three Ss with open:
    J opened the door with a key :
    The key opened the door
    The door opened
J = [agentive]; key = [instrumental] and door = [objective]

[Fillmore 1968] suggests six cases:
    - AGENTIVE ('typically animate perceived instigator')
    - INSTRUMENTAL ('inanimate force or object causally involved')
    - DATIVE ('animate being affected')  EXPERIENCER (Fillmore [1971a])
    - FACTITIVE ('object or being resulting from the action or state') RESULT
    - LOCATIVE ('location or spatial orientation')
    - OBJECTIVE ('the semantically most neutral case')
Later, Fillmore 1971a uses EXPERIENCER for dative and RESULT for factitive,
and adds:
    - COUNTER-AGENT added as 'the force or resistance against which the
	    action is carried out
    - SOURCE ('the place from which something moves')
    - GOAL
and talks of AGENTS and OBJECTS instead of agentive and objective.

Case grammar can capture the inverse relation of teach and learn; and also
account for the difference between J ruined the table and J built the table.

hierarchical ordering of cases: Agent > Experiencer > instrument > object;
i.e. if agent is present, it will be subj, else ...
can't say: * John and the key opened the door or
           * The key opened the door by John
	   * The door opened w a key [can't see why not]
Only if the object is alone can it be the subject
     	    The door opened

In later work [Fillmore 1977] suggests that J smeared the wall w paint or
J smeared paint on the wall; or  J sold a book to H or H bought a book from
J; these are changes in PERSPECTIVE and not case.

strange cases:
	I saw Helen and a football match
	 	(both are objects, but diff kinds; ?ZUEGMA?)
        The smoke rose (smoke is object)
	The smoke rose and blotted out the sun (smoke = both object and agent)

What is agency?
	The wind blew and opened the door
	  	(is the wind an agent or an instrument?)
agents must be animate and also deliberative?  What of
       the virus destroyed the cabbages vs
       the slugs destroyed the cabbages

AMBIGUITY in case assignments, particularly difficult example:
	My ear is twitching
ear could be the agent (since it is doing the twitching) or the experiencer
or even the locative?  149

--6.8: Interrogative / Imperative

Declarative:    J shut the door.
Interrogative:  Did J shut the door?
Imperative: 	Shut the door.

But forms can be deceptive:

    1.  I want to know where you have been
        I insist you stay the night
    2.  Have you heard the news that we won?
        Haven't I told you not to do that?
    3.  Understand that I can't do that
        Tell me what you have done.

Instead of Decl, Intr, and Imp, maybe we should use statement, question
and command for these functions.  (1) are decl but not statements etc.
(cf [Bar-Hillel 1970:365]).

intonation as a formal mark of the question.  e.g. John's coming? (with
rising tone).   Trying to incorporate intonational features into grammar is
attractive but problematic.

review:


"I do not know of any better introduction to semantics...it is clearly and
forcefully written; and it contains a wealth of examples..." John Lyons,
Times Literary Supplement on the first edition.


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail) 2011 Sep 03