Concise summary of the second edition of "An introduction to Language and Linguistics" by Ralph W. Fasold | Jeff Connor-Linton.
A straightforward and to the point summary using clear structure following that of the book's chapters. Important key words are printed in bold and the page overview is c...
Chapter 4
Meaning
Semantics = focuses on the literal meanings of words, phrases, and sentences.
Grammatical processes build complex meaning out of a simpler ones. The link between
the lexicon and the grammar and semantic meaning.
Pragmatics = focuses on the use of language in particular situation, explains how factors
outside language contribute to literal and nonliteral meanings. Connection between
context and use of both semantic and speaker meaning.
Semantic meaning = literal meaning of a sentence (do you have the ability to hand me
an apple).
Speaker’s meaning = intended communication, it goes beyond literal, semantic
meaning (pass me an apple).
Semantic meaning contains 3 components: context in which sentence is used, meanings
of words in the sentence and morphological and syntax structure.
Context of use = the situation in which the sentence was uttered, by particular speaker
to particular addressee, at particular time, etc. This depends on personal lexicon.
Diagram p. 151
Definiteness = definite noun phrases are those introduced with “the” whereas indefinite
is when introduced with “a”. definiteness is when there is no distinction between the
two.
Fundamental semantc concepts and compositonality
Semantic concepts describe how words, phrases, sentences relate to each other and the
world. These allow us to talk about meaning:
Synonymy = same semantic meaning.
Antony = opposed in semantic meaning.
Hyponymy = more specific than the other (Dog of animal)
Hypernymy = more general than the other (Animal of dog)
Ambiguity = multiple semantic meaning (bank)
Entailment = truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second.
Tautology = it must be true.
Contradicts = can’t both be true.
Contradiction = cannot be true at all.
Principle of compositionality = the semantic meaning of any unit of language is
determined by the semantic meanings of its parts along with the way they are put
together. By a) meanings of the individual morphemes and b) morphological and
syntactic structures of the sentence. Compositional semantics (formal semantics) is
specifically concerned with this).
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