Finish Line
As we wind up the semester, it is natural to reflect back on the course description for ‘lexical semantics’:
“Lexical Semantics,” informally speaking, is the study of the meaning of words. Both “meaning” and “word” are actually extremely challenging concepts to understand, so much of the class will be devoted to unpacking these two concepts. In the process, we will overview various dimensions of meaning, how meaning is structured within words, and, conversely, how the context in which a word occurs interacts with its internal meaning. We will also consider relationships that exist among words and among elements out of which words are composed.
Our course description raises many questions, and I look forward to your attempts to answer them . . .
• What are problems with the concept “word,” and why is it not used as a technical term in and of itself?
• How do we analyze the internal contents of words?
• How is the meaning of a word represented?
• What are some properties about the way the meaning of words is represented?
• How do we explain how words are related to one another?
• What do we know when we know a word, in addition to its meaning?
• What do we have to learn when we learn a word? What properties of words don’t we learn?
• What other information is there besides information provided by the meaning of the words we use?
I will be constructing our final test this week, partially in response to your feedback in this blog space. The test will contain three types of questions. Part I will be in an objective format. I’m interested in your understanding of concepts like “listeme,” “function,” “content,” “argument,” “semantic feature,” “synonymy,” “antonymy,” “hyponymy,” “semantic rule as opposed to syntactic rule,” and the relationship of word meaning to overall information. Here is a sample question:
Parker and Riley (Linguistics for Non-Linguists) point out in their textbook that “linguists have been unable to agree on exactly how many and which features constitute the universal set of semantic properties.” Which of the following features for the word “dog” looks most problematic, from the perspective of the argument over what constitutes a member in the universal set of features. That is, which of the following features would most likely not be a member of the set of semantic features we are born with?
1. [-human] 2. [+canine] 3. [+living] 4. [+countable]
Part II will concern your ability to problem solve, to carry out a linguistic analysis. I might ask you to look at a set of data, evaluate generalizations about the data, and then to test the generalizations against additional data, somewhat in the spirit of our work comparing Harley’s and Plag’s analysis of affixation.
Finally, part III of the test will be a question that you yourself write and answer in essay format. This question should serve as a platform for you to reveal an important theme in our course. The ensuing treatment of the theme should involve both a conceptual and technical dimension. You should connect to the class discussion, but you should also touch upon material in the reading that we haven’t discussed in class or in our blog space. You should reveal some ability to use the technicalities of the discipline and to open new ground, while making some sense out of it.
Plan on approximately 20 minutes for each part. Bring paper to class, but you will need to leave your reference material and class notes at home. Be prepared, you don’t want the wheels to come off ’round the final curve!
December 10th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Hi Mark!
The problems with the concept of word is that there is no universal definition of a word and therefore we are talking about listemes which are the minimal meaningful units including affixes and idioms. There are several attempts to define word but all of them can be refuted.
I am not sure but I think that the meaning of a word is represented by an idea which stands for that word. We can also imagine the object when we say its name e.g. a chair – we can imagine a chair with 4 legs. But this is not possible when we are talking about abstract words.
Words are related to one another from the point of view of their synonymity, antonymity, polysemity etc. That means that there are words which are similar to their meaning or opposite to their meaning etc.
We know its synonyms, antonyms, class category if it is a verb or noun, how do we pronounce it if its meaning is positive or negative.
We have to learn its pronunciation, what it means, class category, other forms such as plural, gradation, past tense. We don’t have to learn its social background, history, written form.
Phonology – its pronunciation, syntax – if it is subject, predicate or object and morphology – if it is noun, verb or adjective…
best wishes
December 10th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Good afternoon,
so I tried to answer some of the questions and here are some of my ideas:
1.
the word does not have any proper definitions. Many of the linguists have tried to define what a word is but their attempts have failed. So they decide to use a technical term listeme which is the minimal unit which has a meaning and it also includes affixes and idioms.
2.I am not sure what do you understand under internal content of the word. Maybe its meaning and then the external content would be its spelling ??
3.the meaning of the word is what it means, right?So then the meaning of the word can be represented by an image, for example if I say book I image a book. Or the meaning of the word can be represented by the letters it consists of??
4.Because I didn ´t answer the previous question properly I don´t know the answer to this one.No idea.
5.These are word- word relations? If yes, than I suppose it is synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy etc. and the relations among them. These relations can be explained through the semantic relations and through semantic features of the words??
6.as far as the meaning of the word is concerned, we know its basic meaning, secondary ( if it has one), its antonymy, synonymy and to which semantic category it belongs, for example dog belongs to category of animals.
7.We learn the pronunciation ( phonology), category ( syntax), meaning ( semantics), other forms ( morphology). We don´t learn the spelling, historical background, social background, dialects of the word.
8.Besides the meaning there are info about the word class, its position in the sentence, some morphological features ( past tense, gradation, plural)
December 11th, 2006 at 3:25 am
Hi Mark
So I am going to try to explain what a word means again.
As I mentioned before there are only attempts how to explain this question but all of them can be refuted.
1- word is a sequence of letters that we write consecutively, with no space according to Harley. But this definition is not suitable because we can write any letters with no space and they don’t have to have meaning.
2- word is a sequence of sounds that we pronounce consecutively with no pauses. This is similar to that first definition but in written form.
3- word is a sequence of sounds which can be pronounced on its own, with pauses on either side. The problem with this is that when we are talking we do not divide words within a sentence on its elements. We pronounce more words as one and therefore this is not a minimal unit of speech. how are you? What’s up? Are pronounced as one word but there are three words.
4 – a combination of vocal sounds, or one such sound, used in the language to express an idea and constituting an ultimate minimal element of speech having a meaning. Harley is talking about word WORD and its breaking up into smaller parts which can have meaning such as W – doesn’t mean anything but WOR without D is pronounced as past tense of TO BE.
Therefore the linguists established the LISTEME as a minimal unit which has meaning and includes affixes and idioms as the smallest unit of speech.
How are words related to one another?
I have already tried to explain this but maybe not enough. in that paper where are those webs or nets I would say that it is a verb which makes the relation between words. And if I’m not right again please would you be so kind and help us to better understand this problematic before we take the exam????
Thank you
December 11th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
I would like to focus on only those questions which made me think for a while. Among these are:
Internal content- I think-but correct me if I’m wrong- these are the „semantic traits” of the word e.g.in the case of „girl” the internal contents are +human, +living, -male, -mature
How is the meaning of a word represented? This question wasn’t clear for me for the first time but maybe these representations could be
1, the definition of the word
2, semantic traits (or entailment relations) of the word
3, acc.to the atomistic approach – words mean what they mean- they are atoms of thought so their meaning is represented by themselves.
I still have no idea what answer does your 4th question expect
(What are some properties about the way the meaning of words is represented?)
When we „know”a word we know besides its meaning e.g.what words does it collocate with, in what syntactic structures could it be used, what affixes can it take, in what semantic relation is it with other words, its word category, its style, register (these help us to know in what situations is it appropriate to use the word) etc.
And what concerns your last question (What other information is there besides information provided by the meaning of the words we use?) I think all the info I listed in the paragraph above are „available” in a word. (I say „available” because while the info IS there, not everyone is able to decode it…)
December 12th, 2006 at 4:52 am
Hi,
I would like to react to some of your questions. First of all, the problem with the concept “word” is that there are many definitions of a word, but there is no perfect definition. The Oxford English Dictionary definition 12a is probably the best one, but also a minimum unit of speech having a meaning can be smaller than word [or the unit which has spaces on both sides in writing or speaking]- e.g. contractions and compounds. It is better to use the term listeme, a minimum meaningful unit which includes affixes and idioms, to avoid the problems.
I am not sure about what are the internal contents of words.
I think that the meaning of a word is represented by its semantic features.
We explain how words are related to one another by means of synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, overlap etc.
When we know a word, in addition to its meaning we know its pronounciation, category and other forms. This is also what we have to learn [or figure out] when we learn a word and what we do not have to learn is the historical and social information about the word.
Other information besides the information provided by the meaning is that about the spelling of the word, its usage, the context in which it can be used etc.
I would like to answer the sample question for part I. I think that the feature [+countable] would not be a member of the semantic features we are born with because if these features are universal for all the people, than the [+countable] does not fit there. The reason is that dog should be then [+countable] for all the people regardless what their language is. But what if there is a language in which dog is [-countable]? [Maybe it is difficult to imagine that dog could be uncountable, but I am trying to emphasize that some words in some languages are countable, while in other languages they are uncountable]. Then it would mean that people who speak this language were not be born with the same semantic features as the people in whose language dog is [+countable].
What is more, I think that whether a noun is countable or uncountable is a morphological feature and not a semantic feature.
Best wishes
December 12th, 2006 at 6:54 am
Hello,
I would like to answer some of the questions you raised in our last blog.
We know that lexical semantics is interested in the meaning of words. But what actually the words mean? We know that words are the minimum meaningful units of speech. The words are symbols that represent certain concepts. E.g. symbol nice represents the concept of something is being nice. We must add that the meaning of a word is different when it stands alone and when it appears in the relation to other words. For example, the word nice means something that is pleasant when it stands alone. But when there is a dialogue like:
-”I told mom that you came home late in the night”.
-”That was really nice from you.” In this case the word nice does not mean the same as in the case when it stands alone. In the second case it has a meaning like :you did not keep your promise, you betrayed me.
So, when we know a word we know how to pronunce it-we know its phonological features, we know the meaning of it, we also know its cathegory-whether it is a noun, adjective, verb…etc.
I was also trying to answer the 4th and 5th question but I could not find any acceptable answer to it.
December 12th, 2006 at 9:03 am
I’d like to start with a little remark to milan’s comment. I know that it was not his aim to give a definition of a ‘chair’, but it surprised me that he put the characteristic of its having 4 legs (this seems to be a strong characteristic feature of a ‘chair’). surprisingly, all the objects intended for sitting in the room 129 in stefanikova street have only 2 legs, however, they are still identified as ‘chairs’
concerning the features of ‘dog’, it’s not that easy. to me, +countable seems redundant here, because if the listeme has all the three previous features, the last one is automaticly included in them (at least I have no knowledge about the existence of an uncountable canine). but here, I’d like to go back to the previous lesson where the opposite of ‘dog’ was considered to be a ‘cat’. I was (and still am) quite suspicious about this pair, because if there was [-canine], it could be anything except those objects marked as [+canine]. why should it be especially a ‘cat’? it is not clear to me. though ‘cat’ has the feature [-canine], it has another one: [+feline]. according to cruse’s definiton, there should be only one distinguishing feature by opposites. but here, we have two:
‘dog’ [+canine] [-feline]
‘cat’ [-canine] [+feline]
or, if we choose only one of the above mentioned features, it should mean that the “opposing pole” of canine is feline. but is it? I’m not sure..
as for your questions, I also had problems with answering the question what the inner content of a word is and the following two questions I wasn’t able to answer, too.
December 13th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Hello Mark,
1.answer:
The notion word is not defined properly. From you readings I know that all the assuptions for deffining it, there has always been a counter theory why this is not the proper definition. Besides it is a tricky question and it cannot be answered according to a general deffinition.
2.answer
I would try to split the word into listemes with the help of listemes boundaries. I would draw a line and brake the word. Then I would take a dictionary and search for similar listemes or parts of words, suffixes, preffixes etc. And according to their meaning I would find out the internal content of the word.
3.answer:
Meaning of the word could be represented by its semantic features I think and also it depends from another words used in the sentence->relationship or context is very important.Also the intonation could give you a clue(hight pitch -> stresfull, unpleasant, strinct, low pitch-> sadness, tabu words…etc.)
4.answer
I realy don’t understand the question
5. answer:
The words can be related to each other by meaning, semantic features, by situation they are used in, Is it somehow connected with terms of function words and content words?
6. answer:
we know how its other form?How it is used in sentences?
7. answer:
We learn the pronunciation, meaning, its form and cathegory. We dont need to know the historical and social information of the word. Like its etymologycal background or stylistic use etc..
8. answer:
I dont know
December 17th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Hi,
yes, the course of lexical semantics have raised many questions…Concerning the concept „word“, we know that it is not a technical term. It is not a linguistic term but we can look at it from different perspectives, such as from semantical view, morphological view, etc. In Cruse´s book on Lexical Semantics we can read „the meaning of a words is fully reflected in its contextual relations, the meaning of a word is constituted by its contextual relations.“ (Cruse, 1989, p. 16)
Is hard to define a word also because language is more than just meaning? And that language cannot be limited?