EXPLAINING AND CREATING MEANINGS

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EXPLAINING AND CREATING MEANINGS The Language
Detective, Villiers Park Educational Trust, 9-13
July 2007

• Aims of the session
• To look briefly at the distinction between
  linguistically encoded meanings and contextually
  inferred meanings (i.e. the distinction between
  semantics and pragmatics)
• To think about how far we can account for word
  meanings (or morpheme meanings) in terms of
  dictionary-like definitions
• To discuss any other questions about language
  meaning youre interested in

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knowns and unknowns
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vSq5mQLArjmo
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Eric Cantona press conference
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vbTq6aApCBnA
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knowns and unknowns
Reports that say that something hasn't happened
are always interesting to me, because as we know,
there are known knowns there are things we know
we know. We also know there are known unknowns
that is to say we know there are some things we
do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns
- the ones we don't know we dont know (Donald
Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary, February 2002)
seagulls and trawlers
When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because
they think that sardines will be thrown over the
side into the sea (Eric Cantona, January 1995)
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SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS ACTIVITY
See if you can give a rough characterisation of
what is linguistically encoded by Donald
Rumsfelds and Eric Cantonas utterances. What do
you think is their intended meaning and how do
their audiences work out that thats what they
mean?
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SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS
As we said, before linguistic semantics is
concerned with linguistically encoded meanings
while pragmatics is concerned with meanings we
work out in specific contexts. Weve just seen
that the processes of working out meanings can be
very complicated. To get the full picture you
need to think systematically about all of the
things involved in working out meanings based on
whats linguistically encoded.
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LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS
So whats linguistically encoded? Usually, this
is divided into lexical meanings (word
meanings) and syntactic meanings. So we need
to know the meanings of each word in an
utterance such as Were horses and youre the
mummy horse and also know what this syntactic
structure tells us about the meaning. Of
course, we should really say morpheme meanings.
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INTONATIONAL MEANINGS
What about intonation? Its not easy to decide
how to treat intonational meanings (the meanings
of pitch movements). To make sure we all know
what I mean by pitch movements, Im going to say
this utterance with a particular pitch movement
now and ask you what kind of utterance you think
it is (e.g. a statement, a question, an order,
something else?) I went to Graemes party
yesterday
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INTONATIONAL MEANING
Compare the previous example with the second
utterance in this exchange
A Theyve announced the new author of the James
Bond books. B Theres books?
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INTONATIONAL MEANINGS
Some people think intonational meanings are fully
linguistically encoded (similar to words like
happily). Others think they work more like
non-verbal communication (similar to nonverbal
behaviour such as speaking in a sad, wistful
voice). Others (including me) suggest that
intonation can have both kinds of meaning.
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WORD MEANINGS
How can we explain the meanings of words? How,
for example, would you explain the meaning of the
word orange?
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WORD/MORPHEME MEANINGS
A natural initial assumption is that we can
account for word meanings by defining them. Do
you know of any problems with this approach? To
help you think about it, propose a definition of
the following words and then look up their
meanings, and the meaning of orange, in more than
one dictionary bachelor elm yew beech
happy paint although he How satisfactory
do you think these definitions are? Do they
accurately reflect what we know about their
meanings?
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PROBLEMS WITH DEFINITIONS
When people think of word meanings, they usually
think in terms of dictionary definitions, but
there are several problems with assuming that we
can account for word meanings in this kind of
way, including

• Circularity (defining words in terms of words)
• Variation from speaker to speaker
• Some words (e.g. although) dont seem to fit this
  kind of approach

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WORDS AND CONCEPTS
One way out of the circularity problem is to say
that words name concepts (or that word meanings
ARE concepts). Its not circular to say that
bachelor names the concept BACHELOR as long as
we then go on to explain what the concept
BACHELOR is/means. So whats the concept
BACHELOR? One approach suggests that we should
explain this by analysing the concept into other
concepts from which it is composed,
e.g. ADULT MALE HUMAN NEVER MARRIED
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WORDS AND CONCEPTS
Can you see any problems with our new approach?

• Clues
• Ask yourself what are the meanings of each of
  the smaller concepts used in the definition
• How would you break down the meaning of
  ALTHOUGH OR HE into other concepts?

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KINDS OF WORD MEANING
There are different kinds of word meaning. Words
like although and he do not have the same kind of
meaning as words like bachelor or elm. See if
you can separate these words into groups with
similar kinds of meanings and say something about
the kinds of meanings they have (if theyre
ambiguous, treat the different senses as being
associated with more than one word) bachelor al
though he chase follow painful but tomorrow
democracy here free even
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KINDS OF WORD MEANING
We can distinguish at least four types of word
meaning

• concept words which we can treat as naming
  concepts, e.g bachelor
• pointing words (technically known as
  deixis/deictic expressions) which acquire a
  meaning (or a referent) when uttered in a
  specific context, e.g. here
• contextually determinable words, whose meanings
  can be (but arent always) fixed in a particular
  context, e.g. painful
• definitionally vague words for which the
  meaning never becomes determinate, e.g. democracy

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KINDS OF WORD MEANING
So what does this picture suggest for how we
understand the meanings of utterances? What, for
example, would be the linguistically encoded
meaning of this utterance?
The dentist pressed against my tooth and asked
if it was painful
And how would you work out what it meant in a
particular context?
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INFERRING MEANINGS
To finish, consider whats linguistically encoded
by these utterances and how hearers work out what
they mean
This is the best essay Ive ever read This is
the worst essay Ive ever read Its not the
best essay Ive ever read The party was a
disaster. 100 people turned up Phew. I thought
I was bald but Ive just found Ive still got one
hair left. Is Graeme here now?