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aning and semantics•

3levelsofmeaning

– EXPRESSION MEANING – UTTERANCE MEANING – COMMUNICATIVE MEANING1Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics

Expressionmeaning• Corresponds to





(1)I don't need your bicycle.

• Phrasal meaning results from putting thewords togetherneed:

sth. is important for sobicycle:two-

wheeled vehicleI:(instruction to find out who is the) speakernot

:negationdo:



present tense (soa

takes place at utterance time)your:addressee who is in a particularrelationship to some entity• Sentence (phrasal) meaning of (1):'for the speaker, the two-wheeled vehicle of theaddresse(s) is not very

important, at the time when s is beinguttered‘ It is left open who the speaker and theaddressee(s) are, whatparticular time is referred to and which

bicycle.3Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11




UTTERANCE MEANING

• correspondstospeaker meaning

ormeaning(1)'I don't need your bicycleThe meaning which results if thesentence is uttered in a specificscenario:• S1

1 August 1996, morning: Mary hasbeen planning a trip totown that afternoon. Two days before,she talked with her



neighbor John about the trip andasked him to lend her his

bike for the trip. She had lent her carto her daughter anddid not know if she would get it backin time. Meanwhile herdaughter is back and has returned

Mary's car. Mary is talkingwith John on her mobile, telling him,embedded within theusualssmall talk: (1)4Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics(1)I don't need your bicycle

. – If (1) is used in a particular scenario, thereferences are fixed. If the



sentence is used in S1, the sentence istrue. But in a slightly different

scenario it might be false.(scenario/world/context/constellation) – As long as (1) is not actually used withconcrete reference, it fails to betrue or false.• The question of truth primarily concernsDECLARATIVE sentences.cf. (1) toDo you need a bicycle?

orTake my bicycle!5Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics(1)I don't need your bicycle. – (1)



can be true in different scenarios, cf.S1

andS2.• S2:Same time and place. John's five-year-old daughter Maggie isplaying at home with her five-

year-old friend Titus. They areplaying with a game of cards that displayall kinds of vehicles. Titus

is in the possession of a card that showsa snowmobile. Maggie iseager to exchange this card for one ofhers and offers Titus a card



with a bicycle. Titus rejects the exchangesaying (1).

– The word meaning ofbicycleis shifted to fit the given context, i.e. theexpression meaning may be subject tocertain kinds ofmeaning shifts.6SchwabeSemanticsWS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics CONTEXT OF UTTERANCE• The

CONTEXT OF UTTERANCE (CoU) is thesum of circumstances thatbear on reference and truth. The mostimportant ones:



o

speakero

addresseeo

utterance timeo

utterance placeo

the facts given when the utterance isproduced• The context is indicated by particular

linguistic expressions(1)I don't need your bicycle.(2)

Peter will be here tomorrow'.7Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11




COMMUNICATIVEMEANING• Communicative function of an

utterance.(1)I don't need your bicycle.− Neither the level of expressionmeaning nor that ofutterance meaning is the primary levelon which weinterpret verbal utterances. In an

actual exchange, our mainconcern inevitably is this: what is thespeaker's intention?

S1:



(1)can be taken as a statementand thereby as awithdrawalof a former request.S2:

(1)can be interpreted as arefusalof an offer.8Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics• A

theory that addresses thecommunicative use ofexpressions



isspeech act theory

, introduced in the 1950s byJohn L. Austin and developedfurther by John R. Searle.•

Whenever one makes an utterancein a verbal exchange, oneacts on several levels: – 'locutionary act' (using a certain

expression with a certainmeaning) – 'illocutionary act' (in performing a

locutionary act one alsoperforms an illocutionary act on thelevel on which the



utterance constitutes a certain typeof 'speech act': a

statement, aquestion, a

request, apromise, etc.9Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics Summary – SEMANTICS is the study of the meaningsof linguistic expressions, eithersimple or complex, taken in isolation. Itfurther accounts for the way



utterance meaning, i.e., the meaning of anexpression used in a concrete

context of utterance, is related toexpression meaning. – Level of meaning• expression meaning (sense)

(the meaning of a simple or complexexpression taken in isolation)• utterance meaning (meaning)(the meaning of an expression when usedin a given context ofutterance; fixed reference and truth value(for declarative sentences))• communicative meaning(the meaning of an utterance as a

communicative act in a given socialsetting)10Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11




SENTENCE MEANING ANDCOMPOSITIONALITY• LEXICAL MEANINGWord meanings are must be known and

therefore learned. The wordmeaning are stored in our mental lexicon.Stored meaning is calledLEXICAL MEANING•

GRAMMATICAL MEANINGGRAMMATICAL MEANING is determinedby a word form and particularsyntactical configurations.•

COMPOSITIONAL MEANINGSentence meaning is derived from lexicalmeanings. This process is



called COMPOSITION.Complexexpressions whose meanings are not

stored in the Lexicon haveCOMPOSITIONAL MEANING.11Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11


COMPOSITIONAL MEANING – The (lexical + grammatical) wordmeanings are combined

into a whole, the meaning of asentence. – The composition of the wholesentence meaning draws on

three sources:•



LEXICAL MEANINGS of the basicexpressions (lex. items)

• the GRAMMATICAL FORMS ofthe basic expressions•

the SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE ofthe complex expressions12Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1

Meaning and semanticsCPsententialmood(

if:communicativemeaning



)the

dogC‘ C0

IP t

ense, verbalmood(if

:utterancemeaning)ti

I'I0



VPargument

structure(if: sense)ate

jti

V‘ V0

DPD0

NPthe

APNPyellow



socksZentrumfür

AllgemeineSprachwissenschaftSemantics WS 08/0913


Compostion rules for:•

AP + NPmodification• Det + NPreference

• V0





Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

1 Meaning and semantics• The Principle of Compositionality

yields a convenient division ofsemantics into the followingsubdisciplines

: – LEXICAL SEMANTICS expressionmeanings stored in the mentallexicon (

sock, I, the, need) [basic vocabulary of syntax] – COMPOSITIONAL WORDSEMANTICS the meanings of words

that are formed by the rules of wordformation (mousify



, mousefood, ...

) [basic vocabulary of morphology] – SEMANTICS OF GRAMMATICALFORMS the meaningcontribution of grammatical]

forms – meaning, the range of possibleutterance meanings.

UTTERANCE MEANING mechanisms(e.g. meaning shifts,reference) that determine, on thebasis of the compositionallyderived expression15Schwabe Semantics WS 10/11

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