compositional semantics

8/2/2019 Compositional Semantics

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SEMANTICS

NIK NURFAKHIRA BINTI NIK MOHD SALLEHNUR ATIKAH IBRAHIMHANIS AQILAH JOHARINUR ALIA IZYAN RASLIWAN NURFARAHIYAH BT W.LIAH

TUAN NUR IZZATI TUAN MOHAMAD


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Introduction :

Unlike lexical semantics, which focuses on the

meanings of individual words, the field

ofcompositional semantics looks at the

meanings of sentences and longer utterances.

Much of the focus of traditional semantics has

been on vocabulary, but contemporary semantics

is increasingly concerned with the analysis of

sentence meaning, or al least of those aspects of

sentenced meaning that cannot be predicted from

the sum of the individual lexemes.


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Area :

The major areas of compositional

semantics are anomalies, idioms,

ambiguities, and presuppositions.


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Anomalies The semantic properties of words determine

what other words they can be combined with.

A sentence widely used by linguistics

illustrates this fact:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

The sentence obeys all the syntactic rules of

English. The subject is colorless green

ideas and the predicate is sleep furiously. It

has the same syntactic structure as the


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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

But there is obviously something semantically

wrong with the sentence. The meaning

ofcolorless includes the semantic feature

"without color," but it is combined with the

adjective green, which has the semantic feature

"green in color." How can something be both

"without color" and "green in color"? This sentence

violates what we know about semantic features

and is, therefore, semantically anomalous.


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Semantic violations in poetry may form strange

but interesting aesthetic images , as in Dylan

Thomas's phrase a grief ago. Ago is originally

used with words specified by some temporal

semantic features:

When Thomas used the word grief with ago, he

was adding a durable feature to grief for poetic

effect, so while the noun phrase is anomalous, it

evokes certain feelings.

A week ago , an hour ago, a month ago, a centuryago BUT NOT a table ago, a dream ago, a motherago, a paper ago


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So although phrases like Thomas's a grief

ago violate some semantic rules, we canunderstand them. Breaking the rules creates

the imagery desired. The fact that we are

able to understand, or at least interpret,

anomalous expressions, and at the same time

recognize their anomalous nature,

demonstrates our knowledge of the semantic

system and semantics properties of the

language.


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Idioms

Idiomatic expressions are phrases that have fixed

meanings that are literal. Fixed meanings cannot

be inferred from the meanings of the individual

words. For example, "pull my leg" means to kid or

joke and has nothing to do with pulling legs. It is

an expression whose origins are often lost to

history. Here are some common English idioms:


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some common English idioms:

GIVE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT- BELIEVE SOMEONE'S STATEMENT, WITHOUT PROOF.

EXAMPLE : "THE TEACHER'S EXPLANATION DID NOT SEEM LOGICAL,

BUT I GAVE HER THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT."

FIT THE BILL

- SEEMS CORRECT.EXAMPLE : "THAT SEEMS TO FIT THE BILL. I'LL TAKE IT.

ROCK THE BOAT

- CREATE PROBLEMS FOR OTHER PEOPLE.

EXAMPLE: "EVERYONE LIKES ANTONIO. HE DOESN'T ROCK THEBOAT.

DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH- DON'T WAIT TOO LONG BECAUSE IT MIGHT NOT HAPPEN.

EXAMPLE : "YES, IT'S POSSIBLE THAT THEY WILL LOWER TAXESBUT DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH."


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Idioms are similar in structure to ordinary phrases except

that they tend to be frozen in form and do not readily enter

into other combinations or allow the word order to change.

Thus,

(1) She put her foot in her mouth

has the same structure as (2) She put her bracelet in her

drawer

But

The drawer in which she put her bracelet was hers.

Her bracelet was put in her drawer.

are sentences related to sentence (2).

The mouth in which she out her foot was hers.


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AmbiguityAmbiguity, as you have learned, is

when words have more than onemeaning. For

example, glasses can mean eye

glass, sunglasses, and drinkingglasses.

Ambiguity at the sentence level

means a phrase or sentence hasmore than one underlyingstructure, such as these phrases

Tibetan history teacher (the--


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Presupposition

A presupposition is background belief

relating to an utterance that

must be mutually known or assumed bythe speaker and hearer for the utteranceto be considered appropriate in context

generally will remain a necessaryassumption whether the utterance isplaced in the form of an assertion,

denial, or question, and can generally be associated with a

specific lexical item or grammaticalfeature (presupposition trigger) in the

utterance.


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For example, the utterance

John regrets that he stoppeddoing linguistics before he left the

university

has thefollowing presuppositions:

There is someone uniquelyidentifiable to speaker andaddressee as John.

John stopped doing linguistics


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The utterance

I'll have some more coffee

presupposes that you have already hadsome.

For your information, two terms relatedto presupposition that we don't cover inthis classare implicature and entailment (whichdescribes the relationship between twostatements where the truth of onesuggests the truth of the other, but --distinguishing implicature from

entailment -- does not require it.


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~THE END~

compositional semantics

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