语义学汇总

语义学复习佛脚大全--- 鱼太郎一、填空1.西方主流语言学派：Traditional philology(lexical meaning),historical comparative L(lexicalmeaning),structural L(little attention to meaning),functional L(meaning centre theory),TG grammar(standard theory),cognitive L(meaning centre theory)2.语言学不同的研究方式与观点：specific vs general, synchronic vs diachronic,macrolinguistics vs microlinguistics, thoeritical vs applied, descriptive vs prescriptive3.结构主义学派代表人物：Saussure, bloomfield系统功能派代表人物：Firth,M.A.K.Halliday(Ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning&textual meaning)转换生成语法代表人物：Chomsky(6大阶段：nativism, universal grammar ,autonomy,modularity, formalism,deduction；6变：TG grammar, standard theory, extended standard theory, revised extended standard theory, government&blinding theory, minimalist program ), Katz(在standard theory阶段引入语义成分，使phonology, semantics&syntax成为三大分支)认知语言学代表人物：Lakoff,Jackendoff4.语言学三大革命：Structualist L(Saussure: study language itself)→TG grammar(Chomsky:study mind)→Cognitive L(Lakoff: study embodiment)5.Saussure的革命-- 两分法：19世纪语言学主流：speech, external, diachronic, entity.（Chomsky弃之）6.认知语言学对TG的六大批判基础：embodiment,specific side of L, cognitive strategies,form and meaning, non-formalism, induction and deduction.7.Analytic philosophy包括logical empiricism和ordinary language philosophy.前者代表有Frege, Russel, Wittgenstein(前期),Schlick,Carnap, Tarski,Davidson,Morris等，后者代表有Moore,Wisdom, Wittgenstein（后期）,Austin,Grice,Searle.8.西方哲学简史的三大转向：Onotological turn→epistemology turn→linguistic turn。

语义学课期末总结_期末工作总结
语义学是研究语言的意义和词义的学科。

在本学期的语义学课程中，我学习了语义学的基本概念、主要理论框架以及相关的研究方法和技巧。

通过这门课程，我对语言意义的产生和表达有了更深入的理解，并且掌握了一些基础的分析和解释方法。

在学习词义学的内容时，我对词义的组成和划分有了更深入的了解。

词汇是构成语言的基本单位，它的意义由多个组成成分构成，包括符号本身、外延和内涵等。

我们学习了一些常见的词义关系，如上下位关系、同义关系和反义关系等，并且通过实例分析来加深了对这些关系的理解。

在学习句义学的内容时，我学习了句子的意义是如何通过结构和语用信息来产生和表达的。

我们学习了一些句子的基本意义类型，如描述句、陈述句、疑问句和祈使句等，并且掌握了分析和解释这些句子的方法。

我们也学习了一些常见的句义关系，如逻辑关系、因果关系和条件关系等，通过分析句子之间的关系来推断和理解句子的意义。

在学习实践语义学的内容时，我们学习了一些实际应用的技能和技巧。

我们学习了如何使用语料库来分析和研究语义现象，如词义变化、语义演化和语义隐喻等。

我们还学习了如何进行实证研究，通过实验和调查来验证和支持语义学的理论和假设。

语义学课期末总结_期末工作总结
语义学是一个对语言意义的研究领域，涉及到词汇、句法和语境等方面的内容。

在本学期的学习中，我对语义学的基本原理和方法有了更深入的了解，并在课程中获得了一些重要的收获。

我学习了语义学的基本概念和术语。

我了解到词汇是语言意义的基本单位，它们通过不同的词义和语境来构成不同的句子。

词汇的意义可以通过句法结构和语境来确定，这是语义学的一个重要研究方向。

我还学习了一些常见的语义关系，如同义关系、反义关系、上下位关系等，这些关系对理解语言意义起到重要的指导作用。

我学习了一些常见的语义分析方法。

语义分析是将语言中的词汇和句子转化为形式化的表示，以便进一步分析其意义。

逻辑语义是一种常用的语义分析方法，它将自然语言的意义转化为逻辑形式，并通过逻辑规则进行推理和分析。

语义角色标注也是一种常见的语义分析方法，它将句子中的词汇与其在句子中扮演的语义角色进行对应。

这些语义分析方法在自然语言处理和人工智能领域有着广泛的应用，对机器翻译、信息检索等任务起到重要的支持作用。

通过本学期的学习，我对语义学的基本原理和方法有了系统的了解，并认识到语义学在实际应用中的重要性和挑战。

学习语义学让我对语言的意义有了更深刻的理解，也为我今后从事相关研究和工作奠定了基础。

希望将来能进一步深入研究语义学，并将其应用于实际问题的解决中。

语义学一．语义学（Semantics）的定义：研究语言单位的意义，尤其是词语和句子的意义。

二．词汇意义（Lexical Meaning）：1）意义与指称（sense and reference）：意义与指称是语言研究中的两个术语，它们之间既相互联系，又相互区别。

意义（sense）是一系列抽象语义特征的集合，与语境无关，可以在字典中查到。

而指称（reference）是语言形式在现实物质世界中所指的事物；它涉及语言形式与非语言的现实世界之间的关系。

意义与指称是意义的两个相关但不同的方面，例如“morning star”和“evening star”的意义虽然不同，但其指称一样，都指代天空中的同一颗星星。

2）外延意义（denotative meaning）：指词语所指称的外部世界的事物、状态、抽象情感。

例如：dog(狗)的外延意义是指“一种四肢、有毛、会汪汪叫的哺乳动物”，这种意义在任何国家、任何时代都不会改变。

3）内涵意义（connotative meaning）：指源于语言使用者的个人经历、情感、评价、语境等外部因素的意义。

例如dragon一词，在汉语文化中象征着“高贵”、“权利”，但在某些英语国家文化中，其内涵意义则为“残暴”和“邪恶”。

三．意义关系（Sense Relationship）：1）同义关系（Synonymy）：方言同义词（Dialectal synonyms）：意义相同但方言有差异的词，例如：autumn（BrE）= fall（ArE）。

文体同义词（Stylistic synonyms）：意义相同但在文体上或者正式程度上有差别的词，例如：buy（较为随意）——purchase（较为正式）。

搭配同义词（Collocational synonyms）：指意义上相同，但是搭配不相同的词。

例如：provide和supply，provide sth. for sb.和supply sth. to sb.在情感或评价意义方面存在差异的同义词（Synonyms with different emotive or evaluative meaning）：意义相同，但在情感或评价意义方面存在差异的词，例如：politician （政客）含贬义色彩，statesmen（政治家）含褒义色彩。

语言学知识_语义学语义学一．语义学（Semantics）的定义：研究语言单位的意义，尤其是词语和句子的意义。

二．词汇意义（Lexical Meaning）：1）意义与指称（sense and reference）：意义与指称是语言研究中的两个术语，它们之间既相互联系，又相互区别。

意义（sense）是一系列抽象语义特征的集合，与语境无关，可以在字典中查到。

而指称（reference）是语言形式在现实物质世界中所指的事物；它涉及语言形式与非语言的现实世界之间的关系。

意义与指称是意义的两个相关但不同的方面，例如“morning star”和“evening star”的意义虽然不同，但其指称一样，都指代天空中的同一颗星星。

2）外延意义（denotative meaning）：指词语所指称的外部世界的事物、状态、抽象情感。

例如：dog(狗)的外延意义是指“一种四肢、有毛、会汪汪叫的哺乳动物”，这种意义在任何国家、任何时代都不会改变。

3）内涵意义（connotative meaning）：指源于语言使用者的个人经历、情感、评价、语境等外部因素的意义。

例如dragon一词，在汉语文化中象征着“高贵”、“权利”，但在某些英语国家文化中，其内涵意义则为“残暴”和“邪恶”。

三．意义关系（Sense Relationship）：1）同义关系（Synonymy）：方言同义词（Dialectal synonyms）：意义相同但方言有差异的词，例如：autumn（BrE）= fall（ArE）。

文体同义词（Stylistic synonyms）：意义相同但在文体上或者正式程度上有差别的词，例如：buy（较为随意）——purchase（较为正式）。

搭配同义词（Collocational synonyms）：指意义上相同，但是搭配不相同的词。

例如：provide和supply，provide sth. for sb.和supply sth. to sb.在情感或评价意义方面存在差异的同义词（Synonyms with different emotive or evaluative meaning）：意义相同，但在情感或评价意义方面存在差异的词，例如：politician （政客）含贬义色彩，statesmen（政治家）含褒义色彩。

《语义学基础知识综合性概述》一、引言语义学作为语言学的一个重要分支，研究语言的意义，对于我们理解和运用语言起着至关重要的作用。

从日常交流到文学创作，从学术研究到人工智能，语义学的影响无处不在。

本文将全面阐述语义学的基础知识，包括基本概念、核心理论、发展历程、重要实践以及未来趋势。

二、基本概念1. 语义的定义语义是指语言所表达的意义，包括词汇意义、句子意义和语篇意义等。

它涉及到语言符号与所指代的事物、概念、情感之间的关系。

2. 语义单位语义学中常见的语义单位有词素、词汇、短语和句子等。

词素是最小的有意义的语言单位，词汇是由词素组成的词语，短语是由词汇组成的语言片段，句子则是表达完整意义的语言单位。

3. 语义特征语义特征是指词汇或语言单位所具有的特定意义属性。

例如，“红色”这个词汇具有“色彩鲜艳”“暖色调”等语义特征。

语义特征可以帮助我们区分不同的词汇和语言单位，理解它们的意义和用法。

三、核心理论1. 指称理论指称理论关注语言符号与外部世界的关系，探讨语言如何指代现实中的事物和概念。

指称可以分为直接指称和间接指称。

直接指称是指语言符号直接指代具体的事物或概念，如“苹果”这个词汇直接指代一种水果。

间接指称则是通过隐喻、转喻等修辞手法来指代事物或概念。

2. 涵义理论涵义理论研究语言符号所蕴含的意义和情感。

涵义可以分为概念涵义和情感涵义。

概念涵义是指词汇或语言单位所表达的客观概念，如“汽车”这个词汇的概念涵义是一种交通工具。

情感涵义则是指词汇或语言单位所表达的主观情感和态度，如“美丽”这个词汇的情感涵义是积极的、赞赏的。

3. 语义场理论语义场理论认为词汇不是孤立存在的，而是处于相互关联的语义网络中。

同一语义场中的词汇具有相似的意义和用法，它们之间的关系可以是同义关系、反义关系、上下义关系等。

例如，“红色”“蓝色”“绿色”等词汇属于颜色语义场，它们之间是并列关系。

4. 语用学与语义学的关系语用学研究语言在实际使用中的意义和效果，与语义学密切相关。

语义学笔记整理第⼀章作为语⾔学⼀个分⽀的语义学语义学的建⽴以法国学者⽶歇尔·布勒阿尔1897年7⽉出版《语义学探索》为标记。

该书1900年翻译为英⽂“语义学：意义科学的研究（Semantics:Studies in the Science of Meaning）”。

这本专著材料丰富，⽣动有趣，重点在词义的历史发展⽅⾯，兼顾词汇意义和语法意义。

全书共三编：1，讲词义变化的定律，介绍变异、扩散、类推等概念；2，讲如何确定词义，介绍释义、⽐喻、多义、命名等；3，讲词类、词序、组合规则等，涉及语法意义。

除了语⾔学的语义学，还有逻辑学的语义学，哲学的语义学，还有⼼理学家对语义的研究。

a,逻辑学的语义学是对逻辑形式系统中符号解释的研究，⼜称“纯语义学”，对象并⾮⾃然语⾔的语义。

b,哲学的语义学围绕语义的本质展开涉及世界观的讨论。

“语义学”或“语义哲学”⼜是本世纪前半叶盛⾏于西⽅的⾄今仍有影响的⼀个哲学流派的名称。

c,⼼理学家研究语义，主要是想了解⼈们在信息的发出和接收中的⼼理过程。

d,语⾔学的语义学把语义作为语⾔（乃⾄⾔语）的⼀个组成部分、⼀个⽅⾯进⾏研究，研究它的性质，内部结构及其变异和发展，语义间的关系等等。

布勒阿尔的书给语义的发展以重要地位，声称研究语义的变化构成了语义学。

同时它把语义限制在“词语”的意义上，主要是词义上。

这两个特点⼀直贯穿在他以后半个多世纪的若⼲代表性著作⾥。

继布勒阿尔之后，⼀部有世界影响的语义学专著是两位英国学者奥格登和理查兹合写，1923年出版的《意义的意义》（The Meaning of Meaning）。

这两位学者还曾共同创制了后来遭到各种⾮议的“基本英语”(Basic English).从30年代到50年代后期，以美国布龙菲尔德的理论为代表的结构主义统治着西⽅语⾔学。

布龙菲尔德认为，研究语义学的⼈须是万事皆通的博学者，语⾔学家⽆法担此重任，语⾔学家关⼼的是语⾔的形式。

一、语义学视角下语义的表现（一）王寅教授的分析(1)说话人意义（speaker‟s meaning）, 受话人的意义（hearer‟s meaning）[语言交际过程中参与者的角色分析](2)自然意义（natural meaning）和非自然意义（unnatural meaning）(3)词素义（morpheme meaning）, 词义（word meaning）, 句义（sentence meaning）, 话词义（utterance meaning）, 语篇义（discourse meaning）(4)内涵义（intensional meaning ）与外延义（extentional meaning）[从哲学和逻辑学角度](5)概念意义和附加意义（conceptual meaning and added meaning）（二）、Leech 对意义的区分七种Leech recognizes seven types of meaning in his Semantics1)Conceptual meaning :logical, cognitive, or denotative content2)Connotative meaning: What is communicated by virtue of what language refers to3)Social meaning: What is communicated of the social circumstances of language use4)Affective meaning: What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writer5)Reflected meaning : What is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression6)Collocative meaning: What is communicated through association with words which tend to occur in the environment ofanother word7)Thematic meaning: What is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in terms of order andemphasis.以下为对上述的解释1、自然意义，非自然意义Natural meaning and non-natural meaningNatural meaning and nonnatural meaning is put forward by Grice in his famous article “Meaning”.As for natural meaning, there is the evidential relationship between a cause and its effect. An example of natural meaning is “Those spots mean measles.” “x means y” is related to “x shows that y,” “x is a symptom of y” and “x lawfully correlates with y”. Those spots on little Jimmy do not really mean measles in natural meaning, if Jimmy does not have measles, even if the spots typically correlate with measles.Nonnatural meaning pertains to language and communication. It means words and speakers. On nonnatural s ense, “x means y” is closer to “x says/asserts that y”, “x expresses y”. And when “x means y” is the case, it will usually be true that someone, or some group, means something by x. In nonnatural sense, it can be true that “x means y” even though x obtains when y is not the case. Thus our speaker might indeed have meant that you should bring more whisky, when in reality you should not: his meaning it, in nonnatural sense, does not make it so.In Grice‟s opinion, nonnatural meaning is used to induce some bel ief in hearer. More than that, it is used to induce the belief by getting the addressee to recognize the intention to induce a belief: in meaning something, then speaker does not merely cause the hearer to have a belief, he/she overtly gives the speaker a reason to believe, the reason being that he/she wants the speaker to believe. Thus what a person means, in the nonnatural sense, comes down to his/her complex mental states, especially intentions.2、关于听话人，说话人The Speaker and the ListenerTo ensure smooth communication between the speaker and the listener, it is important to nail down the role of them and the interaction between them. Some basic linguistics theory, such as Speech Act Theory, the Cooperative Principle, Conversational Implicatures, the Politeness Principle, atc.will help learners to well understand the role of the speaker and the listener.Speech act is actions performed via utterances. In English, it is commonly given more specific labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request. These descriptive terms for different kinds of speech acts apply to the speaker's communicative intention in producing an utterance. The speaker normally expects that his or her communicative intention will be recognized by the hearer. Both speaker and hearer are usually helped in this process by the circumstances surrounding the utterance.We know that quite often a speaker can mean a lot more than what is said. The problem is to explain how the speaker can manage to convey more than what is said and how the hearer can arrive at the speaker‟s meaning. H. P. Grice believes that there must be some mechanisms governing the production and comprehension of these utterances. He suggests that there is a set of assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation. This is what he calls the Cooperative Principle (CP).According to Grice, conversational implicatures can arise from either strictly and directly observing or deliberately and openly flouting the maxims, that is, speakers can produce implicatures in two ways: observance and non-observance of the maxims. The least interesting case is when speakers directly observe the maxims so as to generate conversational implicatures. If the hearer wants to accurately export the conversational implicatures, he or she should know something about the the following aspects: 1）conventionality implicatures of the utterance; 2）cooperative principle and criteria; 3）the context of the utterance; 4）some common background knowledge of the speaker and the listener.In most cases, the indirectness is motivated by considerations of politeness. Politeness is usually regarded by most pragmatists as a means or strategy which is used by a speaker to achieve various purposes, such as saving face, establishing and maintaining harmonious social relations in conversation, thus to promote better communication between the speaker and the listener.3、句义，词义，话语意义，命题意义，篇章意义从哲学方面以及语言学方面对其进行分析；它们在不同语境中状态；结合法律举例1) Word meaningWord is a unit of expression that has universal intuitive recognition by native speakers, whether it is expressed in spoken or written form.Sense and reference are two terms often encountered in the study of word meaning. They are two related but different aspects of meaning. Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form: it is abstract and de-contextualized. Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience. Obviously, linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations. On the other hand, there are also occasions, when linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense. A very good example is the two expressions “morning star” and “evening star”. These two differ in sense but as a matter of fact, what they refer to is the same: the very same star that we see in the sky.According to Wittegenstein, words like tools, the meaning of word depends on the usage of the word. In another word, the meaning of word depends on the function of the word. The meaning of a word rests with the usage of the word in a language. Words are different tools in language. These tools are characterized by their usage. Sometimes, he did not see words as tools, however, he said directly: languages are tools. The different concepts in language are different tools.2) Sentence Meaning:(句子意义是构成句子的词汇意义和结构意义共同作用的结果)The meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. It is obvious that the sentence meaning is connected with the meaning of the words which constitute the sentence; but it is stillclear that the sentence meaning is not the totality of the meanings of the component words because the syntactical structure of the sentence also plays a role in determining the sentence meaning. That is to say, the meaning of a sentence is a product of both lexical and grammatical meaning. Lexical meaning is the de-contextual denotation of the words which is defined in the dictionary, while the grammatical meaning is abstract meaning represented by the grammatical structures of the words. Semantic relations:(句子之间的关系：同义，反义，蕴含)Synonymy: the sameness in meaning between sentences.Antonymy: the oppositeness in meaning between sentences.eg: “Overruled.” “反对无效。

语言学中的语义学知识点总结语义学是语言学的一个重要分支，研究的是词汇和句子意义的构成和表达。

本文将对语言学中的语义学知识点进行总结，并以简洁美观的方式呈现，以助于读者理解和掌握。

一、词汇语义学1. 词的意义词的意义是指词所表示的概念或者事物。

在语义学中，词的意义可以分为字面意义和隐喻意义两种。

字面意义是词的直接、表面上的意义，而隐喻意义则是通过比喻、象征等手段所产生的意义。

2. 词汇关系在词汇语义学中，词之间存在多种关系。

最常见的关系包括同义关系、反义关系和上下位关系。

同义关系是指意义相近或相同的词之间的关系，反义关系则相反。

而上下位关系则是指词汇之间的上下级别关系，如水果-苹果。

3. 词义的组成词义是由几个基本组成部分构成的。

其中最重要的是词的本义和引申义。

词的本义是指最基本的、最普遍的意义，而引申义则是通过语境的作用所产生的其他意义。

二、句法语义学1. 句子的意义句子的意义是由词汇意义的组合和句法结构所决定的。

句法语义学研究句子中各个成分之间的关系以及句子整体的意义。

其中包括主谓关系、动宾关系、修饰关系等。

2. 语法词汇和逻辑词汇语法词汇是指在句子中起到语法功能的词汇，如冠词、连词等。

逻辑词汇则是指在句子中起到表示逻辑关系的词汇，如因果词、转折词等。

这些词汇在句法语义学中扮演着重要的角色。

三、篇章语义学1. 篇章结构和语义关系篇章语义学研究文本中句子之间的组织关系和意义关系。

其中包括衔接关系、因果关系、对比关系等。

这些关系决定了整篇文章的意义和连贯性。

2. 信息结构信息结构是指篇章中信息的安排和呈现方式。

其中包括主题句、背景信息、前提条件等。

通过合理的信息结构，可以使文章更加清晰、连贯。

四、语用语义学1. 语言的使用和意义语用语义学研究语言的使用情境和意义的关系。

语言在不同的情境中可能产生不同的意义，而这种意义的变化通过语用语义学可以进行解释和分析。

2. 言语行为言语行为是指在交际中通过语言完成的各种行为，如陈述、询问、命令等。

Chapter 1 Metalinguistic preliminaries1.0 IntroductionIn this chapter, which constitutes the whole of the part1, we deal with a number of concepts which are fundamental to the whole enterprise of putting linguistics semantics on a sound theoretical footing.1.1The meaning of ‘meaning’Semantics is traditionally defined as the study of meaning. The noun meaning and the verb mean are used in a wide range of contexts and in several distinguishable senses.The distinctions between the intentional and the non-intentional, on the one hand, and between what is natural and what is conventional, or symbolic, on the other, have long played a central part in the theoretical investigation of meaning and continue to do so.Most language-utterances, whether spoken or written depend for their interpretation upon the context in which they are used. Utterances containing the verb mean are no different from other English utterances in this respect. It must not be assumed that all natural languages have words in their everyday vocabulary which can be put into exact correspondence with the verb mean and the noun meaning grammatically and semantically.It is linguistic semantics with which we are primarily concerned in this book.1.2 The metalanguage of semanticsThere are contexts in which the noun meaning and the verb mean are not in correspondence with one other.Semanticists refer to as a metalanguage: i.e., a language which is used to describe language. The property by virtue of which a language may be used to refer to itself I will call reflexivity.As far as the metalinguistic vocabulary of natural language is concerned, there are two kinds of modification open to us: regimentation and extension. We can take existing everyday words, such as language, sentence, word , meaning and sense, andsubject them to strict control, defining them or re-defining them for our own purposes.As far as the everyday metalinguistic use of the spoken language is concerned, there are certain rules and conventions which all native speakers follow without ever having been taught them and without normally being conscious of them. But these have not been fully codified and cannot prevent misunderstanding in all contexts.1.3 Linguisic and non-linguistic semanticsThe term linguistic semantics is ambiguous. Given that semantics is the study of meaning, linguistic semantics can be held to refer either to the study meaning in so far as this is expressed in language or, alternatively, to the study of meaning within linguistics. Linguistics does not aim to deal with everything that falls within the scope of the word language, it establishes its own theoretical framework.One kind of non-arbitrariness is commonly referred to these days as iconicity. Roughly speaking, an iconic sign is one whose form is explicable in terms of similarity between the form of the sign and what is signifies: signs which lack this property of similarity are non-iconic.Spoken utterances, in particular, will contain, in addition to the words of which they are composed, a particular intonation-contour and stress-pattern: these are referred to technically as prosodic features. They are an integral part of the utterances in which they occur, and they must not be thought of as being in any sense secondary or optional. The prosodic features of spoken languages and the paralinguistic gestures that are associated with spoken utterances in particular languages in particular cultures vary from languages to language and have to be learned as part of the normal process of language –acquisition.1.4 Language, speech and utterance; ‘langue’and ‘parole’; ‘competence’and ‘performance’The English word ‗language‘, like the word meaning, has a wide range of meaning. But the first and most important point to be made about the world ‘language‘ is that it is categorically ambivalent with the respect to the semantically relevant property of countability: i.e., it can be used as a count noun; itcan also be used as a mass noun, which does not require a determiner and which normally denotes not an individual entity or set of entities, but an unbounded mass or aggregate of stuff or substance.Expressions containing the words English, French, German, etc. exhibit a related, but rather different, kind of system-product ambiguity when they are used as mass nouns in the singular. The syntactic ambivanlence upon which the ambiguity turns, is not between count nouns and mass nouns, but between proper nouns and common nouns.One way of avoiding ambiguity is to adopt the policy of never using the English word language metalinguistically as a mass noun when the expression containing it could be replaced, without change of meaning, with an expression containing the plural form of language used as a count noun. Another way of avoiding, or reducing, the ambiguity and confusion caused by the syntactic ambivalence of the everyday English word language and by its several meaning is to coin a set of more specialized terms to replace it.The word langue always refers to language-system. The word parole has a number of related, overlapping and meanings in everyday French. The essential distinction is between a system and the products of the system.By ―competence‖ Chomsky means the language-system which is stored in the brains of individuals who are said to know the language in question. The Chomskyan term ―performance‖ is often employed by linguistics to refer indifferently both to the use of the system and to the products of the use of the system. ‗Parole‘, in contrast, employed to refer to anything other than the products of the use of particular language-system.1.5 Words: forms and meaningsIn this book, single quotation-marks will be employed for words, and for other composite units with both form and meaning; italics for forms and double quotation-marks for meanings.The grammatically distinct forms of a word are traditionally described asinflectional, some languages are much more highly inflected than others. It is nevertheless important to draw a distinction between a word and its form, even if it has no distinct inflectional forms.Homonyms: different words with the same form. For example, ‗bank1‘, one of whose meaning is ―financial institution‖ and the ‗bank2‘, one of whose meaning is ―sloping side of a river‖, are generally regarded as homonyms.The fact that two or more phonetically different forms may be orthographically identical is also readily illustrated from English. This kind of identity may be called material identity.1.6 Sentences and utterances; text, conversation and discourseThe meaning of a sentence is determined not only by the meaning of the words of which it is composed, but also by its grammatical structure. This is clear from the fact that two sentences can be composed of exactly the same words.In everyday English, the word utterances is generally used to refer to spoken language. The word text is generally refer to written language. Our language must not be confused with speech. Indeed, one of the most striking properties of natural language is their relative independence of the medium in which they are realized.The terms utterance, discourse and conversation have both a process-sense, they denote a particular kind of behaviour , or activity; in their product-sense, they denote, not the activity itself, but the physical product of the activity. Sentence meaning is context-independent, whereas utterance meaning is not: that is to say, the meaning of an utterance is determined by the context in which it is uttered. And there is an intrinsic connexion between the meaning of sentence and the characteristic use,not of the particular sense as such, but of the whole class of sentences to which the sentence belongs by virtue of its grammatical structure. This connection may be formulated, for one class of sentences, as follows: a declarative sentence is one that belongs to the class of sentences whose members are used to make statement.Sentence-meaning is related to utterance-meaning by virtue of the notion characteristic use, but it differs from it in that the meaning of a sentence isindependent of the particular context in which it may be uttered. To determine the meaning of an utterance,we have to take contextual into account.1.7 Theories of meaning and kinds of meaningThe distinction between descriptive and the non-descriptive: with regard to descriptive meaning, it is a universally acknowledged fact that languages that can be used to make descriptive statements which are true or false according to whether the propositions that they express are true or false. Non-descriptive meaning is more heterogeneous and less central. Expressive meaning-i.e. , the kind of meaning by virtue of which speakers express, rather than describe , their beliefs, attitudes and feelings-is often held to fall within the scope of stylistics or pragmatics.Chapter2 Words as Meaningful Unit2.0 IntroductionIt is generally agreed that the words, phrases and sentences of natural languages have meaning, that sentences are composed of words and that the meaning of a sentence is a product of the words of which it is composed.The technical term dictionary-word is lexeme. A lexeme is a lexical unit: the unit of the lexicon. The lexical structure of a language is the structure of its lexicon, or vocabulary. Not all words are lexemes, and not all lexemes are words.2.1 Forms and expressionsThe American philosopher Peirce referred to as the distinction between words as tokens and words as types. It is word expressions, not word forms, that are listed and defined in a conventional dictionary. According to an alphabetic ordering of their citation-forms; what are commonly referred to the head-words of the dictionary entries. In order to assign meaning to the word forms of which a sentence is composed, we mast be able to identify them, not merely as tokens of a particular type, but as forms of particular expressions. And tokes of the same type are not necessarily forms of the same expression.Not all words are listed in a dictionary are words. Some of them are what are traditionally called phrases; and phrasal expressions, like word-expressions, must bedistinguish in principle from the form or forms with which they are put into correspondence by the inflectional rules of the language. And in many languages, they are productive rules for what is traditionally called word-formation, which enable their users to construct new word-expression out of pre-existing lexically simpler expressions.The distinction that has been drawn between lexically simple expressions and lexically composite expressions is not as straightforward, it will depend on the model or theory of grammar with which the linguist is operating. The meaning of a sentence is determined partly by the meaning of the words of which it is composed and partly by its grammatical meaning.2.2 Homonymy and polysemy; lexical and grammatical ambiguityHomonyms are traditionally defined as different words with the same form. But the definition is still defective in that it fails to take account of the fact that, in many languages, most lexemes have not one, but several forms. Also, it says nothing about grammatical equivalence. Absolute homonyms will satisfy the following three conditions:(1) they will be unrelated in meaning;(2) all their forms will be identical;(3) the identical forms will be grammatically equivalent. Absolute homonymy is common enough, but there are also many different kinds of what I will call partial homonymy: i.e., cases where (a) there is identity of one form and (b) one or two, but not all three, of the above conditions are satisfied.2.3 SynonymySynonymy means that expressions with the same meaning are synonymous. It makes identity of meaning the criterion of synonymy, but not merely similarity. Near—synonymy refers to expressions that are more or less similar, but not identical in meaning. Partial synonymy means that synonymy meets the criterion of identity of descriptive meaning, but difference in context and expression.2.4 Full and empty word-formFull word-forms and empty word-forms equal to open-class word-forms and closed-class word-forms respectively.Empty word-forms in English and other typologically similar languages, will have a purely grammatical meaning.Full word-forms will have both a lexical and grammatical meaning.2.5 Lexical meaning and grammatical meaningCategorical meaning is one part of grammatical meaning: it is that part of the meaning of lexemes which derives from their being members of one category rather than another.Lexicon refers to theoretical counterpart of a dictionary. The lexicon is the set of all the lexemes in a language, stored in the brains of competent speakers.Grammatical meaning of the full word-forms is relevant with tense, mood, aspect, gender and person.Chapter 3 Defining the meaning of words3.0 IntroductionReferential theory of meaning is defined as the theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to or stands for.3.1 Denotation and senseDenotation is intrinsically connected with reference. Some words may be put into correspondence with classes of entities in the external world by means of the relation of denotation.The crucial difference between reference and denotation is that the denotation of an expression is invariant and utterance-independent. Reference, in contrast, is variable and utterance-dependent.Sense is a matter of interlexical and intralingual relations: that is to say, of relations which hold between a lexical expression and one or more other lexical expressions in the same language.Sense and denotation apply equally to lexically simple and lexically composite expressions.Sense and denotation are interdependent in that one would not normally know the one without having at least some knowledge of the other.3.2 Basic and non-basic expressionsObject-words are defined logically as words having meaning in isolation and psychologically as words which have been learnt without its being necessary to have previously learnt any other words.Dictionary-words are theoretically superfluous and learnt in terms of the logically and psychologically more basic object-words.Ostensive definition would involve pointing at one or more entities denoted by the word in question and saying, That is a(n) X. But the notion of ostensive definition has some criticism. An expression being defined ostensively must understand the meaning of the demonstrative pronoun ―that‖ in the utterance That is a(n) X, or alternatively of the gesture that serves the same purpose. They must also realize what more general purpose is being served by the utterance or gesture in question. And it is easy to overlook the importance of this component of the process of ostensive definition.Phenomenal attributes (those attributes can be known or perceived through the senses) and functional attributes (those attributes make things useful to us for particular purposes) are determinable factors of denotation.3.3 Natural (and cultural) kindsNatural kinds refer to classes whose members have the same nature or essence.Words denoting natural kinds in the traditional sense might be thought to differ semantically from words denoting what is called cultural kinds.Natural kinds in the traditional sense are often combined and divided by languages, sometimes arbitrarily but often for culturally explicable reasons.3.4 Semantic prototypesThe notion of semantic prototypes is invoked initially, in lexical semantics and in the definition of words denoting natural kinds. And now the notion of semantic prototype has been applied not only to nouns denoting cultural kinds, but to various subclasses of verbs and adjectives, including colour-terms. The notion of semantic prototypes is also adopted to the checklist theory of definition.Chapter 4 The structural approach4.0 IntroductionThe lexical structure of a language can be regarded as a network of sense-relations: it is like a web in which each strand is one such relation and each knot in the web is a different lexeme.There are two approaches to describe the semantic structure of words: componential analysis and the use of meaning-postulates.4.1 Structural semanticsStructural semantics is an influential contemporary position, which is still in its early stages of analyzing the sense, relations that interconnect lexemes and sentences. Structural semantics is the study of relationships between the meanings of terms within a sentence and how meaning can be composed from smaller elements.4.2 Componential analysis (lexical decomposition)The conceptual meaning can be broken down into its minimal distinctive components which are known as semantic features. Such an analysis is called componential analysis. Plus and minus signs are used to indicate whether a certain semantic features is present or absent in the meaning of a word, and these feature symbols are usually written in capitalized letters. For example, the word ―man‖ is analyzed as consisting of the semantic features of [+HUMAN, +ADULT, +ANIMATE, +MALE].One advantage of CA is that by specifying the semantic features of certain words, it will be possible to show how these words are related in meanings. Another advantage is that it enables us to have an exact knowledge of the conceptual meaning of a word.One of its chief drawbacks is the impossibility of making a list of the infinite number of semantic features. CA is hard for us to find a set of features that capture what is common in meaning across lexical item. Thousands of words don‘t fit into such sets of contrasts, like kindness, window et which seem to have very general features like abstract or physical object and then nothing but their unique senses.CA is insufficient for the analysis of the sense in the context. For example, it is easer to analyze the components of ―man‖. However, one can hardly explain the meaning of man in t he sentence or context such as ―Be a man‖.4.3 The empirical basis for componential analysisCA provides linguistics with a systematic and economical means of representing the sense-relations that hold among lexemes in particular languages and on the assumption that the components are universal across languages.Although CA is defective both theoretically and empirically, it can also be implied to prototypical theory and presupposition theory.4.4 Entailment and possible worldsEntailment plays an important role in all theories of meaning, and a more central role in some than in others. It should be noted, first of all, that entailment has been defined as a relation between propositions. Propositions may be either necessarily or contingently true. A necessarily true proposition is one that is true in all possible circumstances: or, as the seventeenth-century German philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) put it, in all possible worlds. A contingently true proposition, on the other hand, is one whose truth-value might have been, or might be, different in other circumstances.When can envisage a possible world, or a possible state of the world, of which it is not true. This intuitively comprehensible notion of possible worlds has been formalized in various ways in modern modal logic. For logic purposed, a possible world may be identified with the set of propositions that truly describe it. It is under this interpretation of ‗world‘ that one talks of propositions being true in, rather than of, a world. According to Kant, a proposition is analytically true if the meaning of the subject is contained in that of the predicate and can be revealed by analysis. An analytically true proposition is one which necessarily true by virtue of its meaning-one which can be shown to be true by analysis. Any proposition that is not analytic is, by definition, synthetic.A logically true proposition is one whose truth-value is determined solely by thelogical form of the proposition. Logical truths constitute one of two kinds of necessary truths. Moreover, if logical form is held to be a part of the meaning of propositions, logical truths are a subclass of analytic truths. First of all, there are propositions which, if true, are true by virtue of the laws of nature. The qualification, ―if true‖, is important. We must never confuse the epistemological statue of a proposition with its truth-value.There is a difference between a proposition‘s being true and a proposition‘s being held to be true. Propositions do not change their truth-value; their epistemological status, on the other hand, is subject to revision in the light of new information, changes in the scientific or cultural frame of reference which determines a society‘s generally accepted ontological assumptions, etc. As we have recognized cultural kinds, in addition to natural kinds, so we might recognize cultural necessity, in addition to natural necessity. The consideration of possibilities such as this makes us realize that semantic entailment is by no means as clear-cut as it is often held to be. Many sentences are not only fully meaningful, but usable to assert what might be a true proposition in some possible world.4.5 Sense-relations and meaning-postulatesSense-relations are of two kinds: substitutional and combinatorial. Substitutional relations are those which hold between intersubstitutionable members of the same grammatical category; combinational relations hold typically, though not necessarily; between expressions of different grammatical categories, which can be put together in grammatically well-formed combinations. It is intuitively obvious, a more specific, lexically and grammatically simpler, expression may be more or less descriptively equivalent to a lexically composite expressions are combined.Only two kinds of substitutional relations of sense will be dealt with in detail here: hyponymy and incompatibility. They are both definable in terms of entailment.The relation of hyponymy is exemplified by such pairs of expressions as dog and animal, of which the former is a hyponym of the latter: the sense of dog includes that animal. Entailment, as we can see in the previous section, is a relation that holdsbetween propositions. Generally speaking, the use of meaning-postulates has been seen by linguistics as an alternative to componential analysis. Looked at from this point of view, the advantage of meaning-postulates over classical or standard versions of componential analysis is that they do not presuppose the exhaustive decomposition of the sense of a lexeme into an integral number of universal sense-components. They can be defined for lexemes as such, without making any assumptions about atomic concepts or universality, and they can be used to give a deliberately incomplete account of the sense of a lexeme.The second kind of substitutional sense-relation to be mentioned here is incompatibility, which is definable in terms of entailment and negation. Complimentarity is often treated as a kind of antonymy. But antonymy in the narrowest sense-polar antonymy differs from complementarity in virtue of gradability. This means that the conjunction of two negated antonyms is not contradictory. In fact, expressins with the meanings more good and more bad are two-place converses. They are like corresponding active and passive verb-expressions and also like such pairs of lexemes as husband and wife.Chapter5 Meaningful and meaningless sentences5.0 IntroductionIn my view, it is much easier to understand the truth-conditional theory of meaning and to see both its strengths and its weaknesses if one knows something about its processor, the verificationist theory, and the philosophical context in which verificationism arose. That there is a connexion between meaning and truth is almost self-evident and has long been taken for granted by philosophers. In this chapter, we take out first steps towards seeing how this intuitive connexion between meaning and truth has been explicated and exploited in modern linguistic semantics.5.1 Grammaticality, acceptability and meaningfulnessAs was noted in an earlier chapter, some utterances, actual or potential, are both grammatical and meaningful; others are ungrammatical and meaningless; and yet others, though fully grammatical and perhaps also meaningful, are for various reasons,unacceptable. To say that an utterance is unacceptable is to imply that it is unutterable in all normal contexts other than those involving metalinguistic reference to them. Many such utterances are unacceptable for socio-cultural reasons.Or again, in some cultures, it might be unacceptable for a social inferior to address a social superior with a second-person pronoun, whereas it would be perfectly acceptable for a superior to address an inferior or an equal with the pronoun in question: this is the case in many cultures. Somewhat different are those dimensions of acceptability which have to do with rationality and logical coherence.5.2 The meaningfulness of sentencesSentences are, by definition, grammatically well-formed. There is no such thing, therefore, as an ungrammatical sentence. Sentences however may be either meaningful or meaningless. Utterances, in contrast with sentences, may be either grammatical or ungrammatical everyday circumstances are ungrammatical in various respects. Some of these are interpretable without difficulty in the context in which they occur. Indeed, they might well be regarded by most of those who are competent in the language in question as fully acceptable.Nevertheless, to say that the distinction between grammatical and semantic well-formedness and consequently between grammar and semantics is not clear-out in all instances is not to say that it is never clear-out at all. There are other, actual or potential, utterances which we can classify, no less readily, as grammatical, but meaningless. Of course, none of these is uninterpretable, if it is appropriately contextulized and the meaning of one or more of its component expression is extended beyond its normal, or literal, lexical meaning by means of such traditionally recognized rhetorical principles as metaphor, metonymy or synecdoche.The expressions well-formed and ill-formed first came into linguistics as part of the terminology of generative grammar: as they are commonly employed, they imply conformity to a set, or system, of precisely formulated rules or principles.5.3 Corrigibility and translatabilityOne of the criteria that was invoked earlier in connexion with grammaticality iswhat we may now label the criterion of corrigibility. Other kinds of unacceptability can be a matter of meaning, also fall within the scope of the notion of corrigibility.Another criterion that is sometimes mentioned by linguists is translatability. This rests on the view that semantic, but not grammatical, distinctions can be matched across languages. The criterion of translatability can supplement, but it does not supplant, our main criterion, that of corrigibility.5.4 Verifiability and verificationismThe cerificationist theory of meaning-verificationism was originally associated with the philosophical movement known as logical positivism, initiated by members of the Vienna Circle in the period immediately preceding the Second World War. Although logical positivism, and with it verificationism, is all but dead, it has been of enormous importance in the development of modern philosophical semantics.5.5 Propositions and propositional contentAyer‘s formulation of the verifiability criterion draws upon the distinction between sentences and propositions. The nature of propositions is philosophically controversial, but those philosophers who accept that propositions differ, on the one hand, from sentences and, on the other, from statements, questions, commands, etc.Ayer talks of sentences as purporting to express propositions, and it is easy to see why. The purport of a document is the meaning that it conveys by virtue of its appearance, or face-value, and standard assumptions about the interpretation of the author‘s intentions. Sentences of whatever kind may be uttered, in various circumstances, without there being any question of the assertion or denial of a proposition.Sentence meaning is intrinsically connected with utterance-meaning, but can be distinguished from it by virtue of the distinction between the characteristic use of a sentence and its use on particular occasions.5.6 Non-factual significance and emotivismEmotivism-the thesis that in making what purport to be factual statements in ethics and aesthetics one is not saying anything that is true or false, but giving vent to。