Understanding Semantics

Understanding Semantics, Second Edition, provides an engaging and accessible introduction

to linguistic semantics. The first part takes the reader through a step-by-step guide to the
main phenomena and notions of semantics, covering levels and dimensions of meaning,
ambiguity, meaning and context, logical relations and meaning relations, the basics of noun
semantics, verb semantics and sentence semantics. The second part provides a critical
introduction to the basic notions of the three major theoretical approaches to meaning:
structuralism, cognitive semantics and formal semantics.

Key features include:

∑ A consistent mentalist perspective on meaning
∑ Broad coverage of lexical and sentence semantics, including three new chapters
discussing deixis, NP semantics, presuppositions, verb semantics and frames
∑ Examples from a wider range of languages that include German, Japanese, Spanish and
Russian
∑ Practical exercises on linguistic data
∑ Companion website including all figures and tables from the book, an online dictionary,
answers to the exercises and useful links at [Link]/cw/loebner.

This book is an essential resource for all undergraduate students studying linguistics.

Sebastian Löbner is Professor for general linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf,

Germany. His main research interests are linguistic semantics and cognitive linguistics.
Understanding Language series

Series Editors:

Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Greville Corbett, Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, UK

The Understanding Language series provides approachable, yet authoritative, introductions

to major topics in linguistics. Ideal for students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics,
each book carefully explains the basics, emphasising understanding of the essential notions
rather than arguing for a particular theoretical position.

Other titles in the series:

Understanding Child Language Acquisition (forthcoming)

Caroline Rowland

Understanding Language Testing

Dan Douglas

Understanding Morphology, Second Edition

Martin Haspelmath and Andrea D. Sims

Understanding Phonetics
Patricia Ashby

Understanding Phonology, Third Edition

Carlos Gussenhoven and Haike Jacobs

Understanding Pragmatics
Jef Verschueren

Understanding Second Language Acquisition

Lourdes Ortega

Understanding Sociolinguistics (forthcoming)

Enam Al-Wer

Understanding Syntax, Third Edition

Maggie Tallerman

For more information on any of these titles, or to order, go to [Link]/linguistics

 Understanding

Semantics
Second edition
Sebastian Löbner
First published in Great Britain 2002 by Hodder Arnold, an imprint of Hodder Education

Second edition published 2013

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2002, 2013 Sebastian Löbner

The right of Sebastian Löbner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Löbner, Sebastian.
Understanding semantics / Sebastian Löbner. -- Second Edition.
pages cm. -- (Understanding language)
Previous edition published under Hodder Education, the second edition is now published under Routledge
after Hodder Education Linguistic titles were acquired in 2012.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Semantics. I. Title.
P325.L567 2013
401’.43--dc23
2012048797

ISBN: 978-0-415-82673-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4441-2243-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-52833-4 (ebk)

Typeset in 11 on 12pt Minion

by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent
 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi

1 Meaning and semantics 1

1.1 Levels of meaning 1
1.2 Sentence meaning and compositionality 7
1.3 Semantics: its scope and limits 14
Exercises 16
Further reading 17

2 Dimensions of meaning 18
2.1 Meanings are concepts 18
2.2 Descriptive meaning 21
2.3 Meaning and social interaction: the dimension of social meaning 28
2.4 Meaning and subjectivity: the dimension of expressive meaning 33
2.5 Connotations 36
2.6 Dimensions of meaning 37
Exercises 39
Further reading 40

3 Ambiguity 41
3.1 Lexemes 41
3.2 Lexical ambiguity 44
3.3 Compositional ambiguity 48
3.4 Contextual ambiguity 49
3.5 Meaning shifts and polysemy 57
Exercises 59
Further reading 60

4 Meaning and context 62

Part 1: Deixis 62
4.1 Person deixis 63
4.2 Demonstratives and place deixis 70
4.3 Time deixis 72
Part 2: Determination 74
4.4 Definiteness and indefiniteness 74
4.5 Quantification 83
 vi Contents

4.6 Generic NPs 90

Part 3: Presuppositions 94
4.7 Presuppositions 94
4.8 Summary 101
Exercises 102
Further reading 104

5 Predication 106
5.1 Predications contained in a sentence 106
5.2 Predicate terms and argument terms, predicates and arguments 108
5.3 Verbs 111
5.4 Nouns and adjectives 115
5.5 Predicate logic notation 120
5.6 Thematic roles 122
5.7 Selectional restrictions 125
5.8 Summary 130
Exercises 131
Further reading 133

6 Verbs 134
6.1 Argument structure, diatheses and alternations 135
6.2 Situation structure 140
6.3 Aspect 150
6.4 Tense 157
6.5 Selected tense and aspect systems 163
6.6 Concluding remark 164
Exercises 165
Further reading 166

7 Meaning and logic 167

7.1 Logical basics 167
7.2 Logical properties of sentences 172
7.3 Logical relations between sentences 175
7.4 Sentential logic 184
7.5 Logical relations between words 187
7.6 Logic and meaning 191
7.7 Classical logic and presuppositions 197
Exercises 201
Further reading 202

8 Meaning relations 203

8.1 Synonymy 203
8.2 Hyponymy 205
8.3 Oppositions 208
8.4 Lexical fields 215
 Contents vii

Exercises 219
Further reading 220

9 Meaning components 221

9.1 The structuralist approach 223
9.2 Applying the structuralist approach to meaning 226
9.3 Semantic features 228
9.4 Semantic formulae 237
9.5 Semantic primes: Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage 242
9.6 Summary and evaluation of the approaches to decomposition 245
Exercises 246
Further reading 246

10 Meaning and language comparison 248

10.1 Translation problems 248
10.2 Headache, international 251
10.3 Relativism and universalism 256
10.4 Berlin and Kay’s investigation of colour terms 258
10.5 Consequences 262
Exercises 263
Further reading 264

11 Meaning and cognition 265

11.1 Categories and concepts 266
11.2 Prototype theory 267
11.3 The hierarchical organization of categories 276
11.4 Challenges to prototype theory 279
11.5 Semantics and prototype theory 284
11.6 Semantic knowledge 292
11.7 Summary 298
Exercises 300
Further reading 300

12 Frames 301
12.1 Barsalou frames 301
12.2 Verbs and frames 311
12.3 Nouns and frames 313
12.4 Frames and composition 319
12.5 Frames and cognition 321
12.6 Conclusion 322
Exercises 323
Further reading 324

13 Formal semantics 325

13.1 Japanese numerals: a simple example of a compositional analysis 325
 viii Contents

13.2 A small fragment of English 330

13.3 Model-theoretic semantics 342
13.4 Possible-world semantics 352
13.5 The scope and limits of possible-world semantics 358
Exercises 362
Further reading 363

References 364

Index 369
 Preface

As for many others, my entrance into semantics was formal semantics, about
forty years ago. At present, this is still the standard approach in many linguistics
departments around the world. Working in the field of semantics my entire academic
life, my conviction has grown that formal semantics is not the ideal framework for
working one’s way into the rich and fascinating reality of natural language meaning.
The perspectives allowed by the formal apparatus developed in formal semantics are
far too restrictive. And the aspects of meaning and the semantic phenomena that are
neglected, or are simply problematic to deal with, are far too numerous. Above all,
formal semantics has little to say about lexical meaning – which, after all, provides
the ultimate basis of all linguistic meaning – and, not by chance, it fails to connect
semantic theory to cognition.
In Understanding Semantics, I have taken a different approach. It is driven by
the idea that students of semantics should first grasp the level of meaning which
linguistic semantics aims to describe and how this level is related to higher levels
of interpretation; they should learn that there are different dimensions of meaning,
in addition to descriptive meaning; they should know about ambiguity and about
the existence of meaning shifts that interfere with lexical meaning; they should get
a notion of the rich inventory of indexical means of expression including deixis,
determination and presupposition carriers; they should learn the basics of lexical
semantics of nouns and verbs; they should know that there are different theoretical
approaches to meaning; and they should get a notion of the fact that linguistic
meaning is ultimately a matter of conceptualizing the things we talk about: when we
put things into words, we are not just giving a one-to-one mapping of what the world
is like – we make a choice by putting things in the particular way we do. Meaning is
not just a matter of logical relations and truth conditions. As to sentential meaning,
the students need to know about the basic semantic functions of NP determination
and the verbal categories of aspect and tense, and they should know the basics of
predication. All this should be discussed from a perspective that also takes a look at
other languages. On this complex background, the more advanced students may start
to work their arduous way into the theory and technicalities of formal semantics.
In order to give an idea of the basic notions of this approach, the book offers a
substantial basic introduction in the last chapter, and a critique.
The second edition of Understanding Semantics is not only a more up-to-date
version of the first edition, but is supplied with new sections that considerably
broaden the coverage of the field. These include:
 x Preface

∑ basic notions of the semantics of word formation (chapters 1 and 12)

∑ deixis and demonstratives (chapter 4)
∑ presuppositions (chapters 4 and 7)
∑ NP semantics (chapter 4)
∑ verb semantics including voice, aspect and tense (chapter 6)
∑ Barsalou frames (chapter 12).
The book is accompanied by a website that provides additional support for
students and instructors ([Link] Along with a
number of additional minor features, the webpage provides
∑ a checklist of key notions for each chapter, interlinked with
∑ a glossary of all technical terms
∑ pdf versions of all figures and tables for your use in teaching, presentations, term
papers, etc.
∑ solutions to the exercises (instructors only).
 Acknowledgements

Among the many people that directly or indirectly were of help in writing this book
and preparing the second edition, I want to express my gratitude to Daniel Hole,
Berlin, who took the trouble of commenting in detail on substantial new parts of
the second edition. I would also like to thank Rachel Daw and Nadia Seemungal at
Routledge for their kind and competent support and guidance for the second edition.
This page intentionally left blank
 1

Meaning and semantics

Semantics is the part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning. This is, of course,
a very superficial definition. The crucial term ‘meaning’ on which the definition
rests has several different readings – a first semantic observation which you will
find at the beginning of almost every textbook on semantics. Among the many
uses of the notion ‘meaning’, only some belong to the field of linguistic semantics.
Meaning is always the meaning of something. Words have meanings, as do phrases
and sentences. But deeds may have meaning too. If a government pursues a certain
policy, we may ask what the meaning is of doing so. The ‘meaning’ of an action or a
policy is what sense it makes or what purpose it serves or what it is good for. More
generally, we apply the notion of meaning to all sorts of phenomena that we try to
make sense of.
The first thing to be stated is that linguistic semantics is exclusively concerned with
the meanings of linguistic expressions such as words, phrases, grammatical forms
and sentences, but not with the meanings of actions or phenomena. We will approach
the problem of linguistic meaning step by step, to arrive at a more precise definition
of semantics at the end of this chapter. A more concrete idea of what semantics is
about will result when you learn about the many facets of this fascinating discipline
in the course of this book.

1.1 LEVELS OF MEANING

Even if we restrict the study of meaning to words and sentences, the notion of
meaning has to be further broken down into different levels at which we interpret
words and sentences.

1.1.1 Expression meaning

Let us get started by looking at a simple example that will illustrate what semantics
is about.
(1) I don’t need your bicycle.

This is an ordinary English sentence. Without even noticing, you have already
recognized it as such, you have interpreted it and you are probably imagining
a situation where you would say it or someone would say it to you. Since you
understand the sentence, you know what it means. But knowing what the sentence
 2 Understanding semantics

means is one thing, describing its meaning is another. The situation is similar with
almost all our knowledge. We may exactly know how to get from one place to another,
yet be unable to tell the way to someone else. We may be able to sing a song by heart,
but unable to describe its melody. We are able to recognize tens of thousands of words
when we hear them. But the knowledge that enables us to do so is unconscious.
Uncovering the knowledge of the meanings of words and sentences and revealing its
nature is the central objective of semantics.
Let us now try to determine the meaning of the sentence in (1). We start from the
meanings of the words it contains. The main verb in a sentence occupies a key role. So,
1
what is the meaning of the verb need ? Actually, there are two verbs need: an auxiliary
verb (as in I need not go) and a full verb. In (1) we have the full verb. It is used with
2
a direct object (your bicycle) and roughly means ›require‹. We ‘need’ something if
it is necessary or very important for us. In (1), what is needed is described by an
expression composed of the possessive pronoun your and the noun bicycle. The noun
means some sort of vehicle, usually with two wheels and without a motor.
The words need and bicycle are the main carriers of information in the sentence,
so-called content words. The meanings of most content words are very differentiated
because there are thousands of the same kind. All the other elements in our sentence
are different in that they represent items from a very limited choice of expressions of
the same kind. Such words are called function words and include articles, pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions and other ‘small’ words. We will examine these elements
one by one.
The subject expression I is one of seven personal pronouns in English (I, you, he, she,
it, we and they). What is the meaning of I ? If Mary says the sentence in (1), it is Mary
who is said not to need the bicycle. If John says (1), it is John. In other words, I is used
for the one who says it; more technically: for the one who produces an occurrence of
this pronoun. The technical term for using an expression for something is reference.
When people use I, they refer to themselves. The entity referred to by an expression
is called its referent. The meaning of the pronoun can thus be described as follows:
I indicates reference to the speaker. Similarly, the pronoun you indicates reference to
the addressee or the addressees.
For each personal pronoun there is a corresponding possessive pronoun: I–my,
you–your, etc. Your in (1) indicates that the bicycle referred to is linked to the
addressee(s). For such a link, there is a broad variety of relations possible. Possession
in the sense of ownership is only one option: the expression your bicycle may also
refer to the bicycle the addressee is just riding or cleaning or repairing, or even the
3
bicycle they have been talking about for the last ten minutes. The meaning of your
can roughly be described as ›linked to the addressee(s)‹.

1 It is common practice in linguistic texts to mark words which are referred to in a sentence, rather
than just used, by using italics. In addition, I use italics for emphasis. Whether a word is referred
to or used emphatically is always clear from context.
2 › … ‹ quotes are used for meanings and concepts.
3 I use they as a gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun.
 Meaning and semantics 3

The form don’t is a contraction of the auxiliary verb do and the negation particle
not. Don’t contributes two things to the meaning of the sentence. It negates the verb
need and thereby turns its meaning into the contrary. In addition, the form don’t
contributes present tense. Tense is the indication that the sentence refers to a certain
time, e.g. present, past or future time. The actual time referred to depends on when
the sentence is uttered. Due to the present tense in (1), we will by default relate the
situation described to the ‘present’ time, i.e. the time when the sentence is being
uttered. Combining these two components of don’t, we may say: the meaning of don’t
is an indication of reference to the time when the sentence is uttered and it turns the
situation expressed by the main verb into the contrary.
So far this has been an attempt to determine the meaning of each word in the
sentence I don’t need your bicycle. This is typical of the work of a semanticist.
As you will have noticed, it is not trivial. For a content word, the description of
its meaning must be specific enough to distinguish it from all words with other
meanings. It would not suffice to describe the meaning of bicycle merely as ›vehicle
with two wheels‹ because there are other kinds of vehicles with two wheels, such as
motorcycles, kick scooters or kids’ balance bicycles. At the same time, the description
must be general enough to cover all cases in which this word could be used. Since
one usually imagines a particular context when one tries to think of a word and its
meaning, one tends to take the meaning too specifically, disregarding other cases in
which the word can also be used.
As for function words like pronouns and auxiliaries and for grammatical forms
such as present tense, their meanings may at first view seem elusive. But it is possible
to account for them too, as our little discussion may have illustrated.
If we put all the pieces together, we can describe the meaning of the sentence as a
whole. It can be roughly formulated as: ›for the speaker, the two-wheeled vehicle of
the addressee(s) is not required at the time when this is being uttered‹.
It is very important to realize that the sentence leaves open who the speaker and
the addressee(s) are, what particular time is referred to and which bicycle. This is not
part of its meaning. Such questions can only be settled if the sentence is actually used
on a concrete occasion. What is, however, determined by the meaning of the sentence
is how the answers to these questions depend on the occasion when the sentence is
used. First, if it is actually used, it is necessarily used by someone who produces the
sentence. With I in subject position, the sentence ‘tells’ us that it is the speaker who
does not need the bicycle. The use of I functions like an instruction: find out who
produced this sentence, this is the referent of I. Second, the use of your presupposes
that there are one or more addressees. The sentence describes the bicycle as related
to them. Third, if a sentence is uttered, it is necessarily used at a certain time. The
time of utterance serves as the reference time for determining what is present, past or
future. The present tense part of the meaning of the sentence conveys the instruction:
attribute the situation described to the time when the sentence is said. Thus the
meaning of the sentence specifies the way in which its reference is determined if and
when it is used at some occasion.
The meanings of words, phrases and sentences, taken out of any particular context
constitute the level of meaning which will henceforth be called expression meaning.
 4 Understanding semantics

Expression is just a cover term for words, phrases and sentences. The term expression
meaning covers in particular word meaning and sentence meaning. As you have
noticed, the determination of expression meaning requires an abstraction from the
use of the expressions in concrete contexts. In this sense, the notion of expression
meaning itself is an abstraction and a theoretical construct. But it is justified in the
way language is conceptualized not only in linguistics but also in common thinking:
we do talk about the meanings of words and complex expressions as such, i.e. we do
address this level of meaning.

1.1.2 Utterance meaning

Let us now examine what happens when the sentence in (1) is actually used. We will
consider two scenarios.

SCENARIO 1
1 August 2012, morning. Mary has been planning a trip to town that
afternoon. Two days before, she talked with her neighbour John about the trip
and asked him to lend her his bicycle. She had lent her car to her daughter and
did not know if she would get it back in time. Meanwhile her daughter is back
and has returned Mary’s car. Mary is talking with John on her mobile, telling
him:
I don’t need your bicycle.

Used in this context, the sentence receives a concrete interpretation. References are
fixed: the personal pronoun I refers to Mary, the possessive pronoun your links the
bicycle to her neighbour John and the time reference is fixed, too: in the given context,
the present tense verb will be taken to refer to the afternoon of 1 August 2012. This is
clear from the fact that Mary could have said: I don’t need your bicycle this afternoon,
without changing the meaning of her utterance. Furthermore, the reference of the
grammatical object your bicycle is fixed: it is the bicycle Mary asked John to lend her
two days before.
This is a different level of meaning, called utterance meaning. It comes about
when a sentence with its expression meaning is actually used in a concrete context
and all references get fixed. When this happens, another central notion comes into
play, the notion of truth. If Mary says (1) in scenario 1, the sentence is true. But
in a slightly different scenario it might be false. As long as the sentence (1) is not
actually used with concrete reference, it fails to be true or false. The question of
truth primarily concerns ‘declarative’ sentences such as the one under review. Only
such sentences, when uttered, are true or false. But it matters also for interrogative
and other types of sentences. For example, if John asked Mary Do you need my
bicycle?, the use of the question form would convey that he wants to know from his
addressee whether it is true or false.
Let us now imagine a different scenario:
 Meaning and semantics 5

SCENARIO 2
Same time and place. John’s five-year-old daughter Maggie is playing at her
place with her friend Titus. They are playing with a game of cards that display
all kinds of vehicles. Titus holds a card that shows a snowmobile. Maggie
is eager to exchange this card for one of hers and offers Titus a card with a
bicycle. Titus rejects the exchange:
I don’t need your bicycle.
In this scenario, references of I, your and the present tense are fixed accordingly. What
is interesting is that in such a context the word bicycle can be naturally interpreted
as referring not to a real bicycle but to a card carrying the picture of a bicycle. Are
we to conclude that the lexical meaning of bicycle must be taken as covering not only
real bicycles but also pictures of this kind of vehicle and things that display such a
picture? The answer is ‘No’. The word bicycle literally means real bicycles, but when
used in special contexts it can also mean ›picture of a bicycle‹, ›card with a picture
of a bicycle‹, ›toy bicycle‹, ›replica of a bicycle‹, etc. or also ›someone riding on a
bicycle‹ in utterances like ‘Stop, there’s a bicycle coming!’ This, however, is a matter of
utterance meaning. What happens in such cases is that the lexical meaning is shifted
for obtaining an utterance meaning that fits into the given context. Such shifts are
quite common; there are many shifting-patterns at our disposal.
For a general definition of utterance meaning, we need a notion for what was
called ‘occasion’, ‘context’ or ‘scenario’ above. The technical term for this is context of
utterance. The context of utterance, CoU for short, is the sum of circumstances that
bear on reference and truth.

DEFINITION 1 Context of utterance

The context of utterance (CoU) comprises the following aspects of the
situation in which an utterance is produced:
∑ the speaker (or producer) of the utterance
∑ the addressee(s) (or recipient(s)) of the utterance
∑ the time at which the utterance is produced and/or received
∑ the place where the utterance is produced and/or received
∑ the facts given when the utterance is produced and/or received

We have seen in connection with (1), how utterance meaning may depend on who
the speaker and addressees of an utterance are and at which time it is produced. The
place where an utterance is made matters for the reference of expressions such as
here, there, upstairs, downtown, etc. as well as for the truth of sentences like It’s raining.
Facts matter principally for truth as well as for reference. For example, Mary can only
refer to John’s bicycle in such CoUs where a certain bicycle is related to John. CoUs
may be real or fictitious. If we read a work of fiction or watch a movie, the relevant
facts and figures are those of the story.
 6 Understanding semantics

Against this background, utterance meaning can be defined as the meaning that
results from an expression being used and interpreted in a given CoU. Utterance
meaning derives from expression meaning on the basis of the particulars provided
by the CoU.
The notion of utterance meaning does not include all that an addressee may
make of an utterance in a particular CoU. Addressees usually make all kinds of
inferences. For example, in scenario 1, John may infer that Mary is still planning to
make the trip since otherwise she would have told him; that she would have asked
him to lend her his bicycle if she could not have used her car; that, however, her
daughter is back with the car and that Mary is not going to lend her the car again
on that afternoon; that Mary will take the car for her trip; that she considers herself
able to drive, etc. All this is not explicitly said with that sentence, and it need not be
true under different circumstances. In the given scenario, these inferences can be
considered communicated because Mary can rely upon John’s understanding them.
Although these inferences are triggered in the addressee’s mind by the utterance of
the sentence, it is important to separate what is actually being said from what is only
inferred. The investigation of such inferences, their role in communication and how
they are related to the utterance meaning of what is actually said, is an important
part of pragmatics, the scientific study of the rules that govern the use of language.
Within pragmatics, Grice’s theory of ‘conversational implicatures’ and Relevance
Theory by Sperber and Wilson deal with inferences of this kind.

1.1.3 Communicative meaning

Neither the level of expression meaning nor that of utterance meaning is the final and
crucial level of interpretation. In an actual exchange, our main concern inevitably is
this: what does the speaker intend – in particular, what does the speaker want from
me? Conversely, when we say something, we choose our words in pursuit of a certain
communicational intention. Verbal exchanges are a very important form of social
interaction. They will always be interpreted as part of the whole social exchange and
relationship entertained with the speaker.
One and the same sentence can be uttered with quite different communicative
results. The utterance of (1) in scenario 1 will be taken as a withdrawal of a former
request. In scenario 2, the utterance of the same sentence constitutes the rejection of
an offer. In other CoUs, uttering the sentence could serve still other communicative
ends. A theory that addresses this level of interpretation is speech act theory,
introduced in the 1950s by the philosopher John L. Austin (1911–60) and developed
further by others, in particular John R. Searle. The central idea of speech act theory
is that whenever we make an utterance in a verbal exchange we act on several levels.
One level is what Austin calls the ‘locutionary act’, defined as the act of saying an
expression with a certain utterance meaning in the given CoU. In doing so, we
also perform an ‘illocutionary act’, i.e. a certain type of ‘speech act’: a statement,
a question, a request, a promise, an offer, a refusal, a confirmation, a warning, etc.
When Titus in scenario 2 says I don’t need your bicycle, he performs the locutionary
 Meaning and semantics 7

act of saying that he doesn’t need Maggie’s card with the bicycle and the illocutionary
act of rejecting her offer. The speech act level of interpretation will be referred to as
communicative meaning.
The three levels of interpretation are connected as follows. Expression meaning is the
level of interpretation which results if the only information we use is the mere linguistic
material. Expression meaning forms the basis for utterance meaning, but does not
determine it. For, as we could see, a sentence with its fixed expression meaning will take
on different utterance meanings if it is used in a particular context. Utterance meaning,
in turn, forms the basis of communicative meaning, without, again, determining it. For
utterances with the same utterance meaning can serve the performance of different
types of speech acts, depending on the ongoing social interaction. Table 1.1 gives a
survey of the three levels of meaning and how they are defined.

Table 1.1
Three levels of meaning

Level of meaning Definition

expression meaning the meaning of a simple or complex expression taken in isolation
utterance meaning the meaning of an expression when used in a given context of utterance
resulting from fixing reference
communicative meaning the meaning of an utterance as a communicative act in a given social
setting

1.2 SENTENCE MEANING AND COMPOSITIONALITY

1.2.1 Lexical vs compositional meaning

We will now take a closer look at sentence meaning. It is a trivial fact that the
meanings of words and sentences differ in one important point. Meanings of words
must simply be known and therefore learned. In our minds, we host a huge lexicon
where all the words we know and their meanings are stored and at our disposition.
Stored meanings are therefore called lexical meanings.
Words can be combined into sentences. We are usually able to understand the
expression meaning of a sentence without any conscious effort. Nevertheless, this
ability is based on complex cognitive processes which take place in our minds
automatically and unconsciously. The process by which we calculate the meaning
of a sentence is called composition, and the resulting meaning is known as
compositional meaning. In some cases, sentences may have lexical meaning, for
example proverbs such as The early bird catches the worm. This does not mean that
their meanings are merely non-compositional. Rather, such sentences have a regular
compositional non-proverbial meaning plus a special meaning which we have to
learn and store in our lexicon.
 8 Understanding semantics

Words can also be used to create new words. This is called word formation,
and its products complex words. For example, you could coin the word joggable,
deriving it from the verb jog by adding the suffix -able, which can be added to a very
large number of verbs. Or you could form the compound carp food. The products of
word formation need not all be stored in the lexicon and yet they can be as easily
and straightforwardly understood as sentences. Obviously, the semantics part of the
brain also knows how to interpret new words formed out of stored lexical material.
Crucially, this holds only for products of word formation that follow general patterns.
There are, on the other hand, very many complex words that carry irregular or
special meanings. Such cases have to be stored in the lexicon in order to receive their
proper interpretation. We’ll return to the semantics of word formation in 1.2.5. For
now, I just want to fix in your mind a terminological convention: the notion of ‘lexical
meaning’ is also to be taken to subsume the meanings of complex words, whether
semantically regular or irregular. This is in line with the ‘dynamic’ view of the lexicon
which sees it not just as a store of entries, but also as comprising components for the
formation of new words and their meanings.
Let us now take a closer look at the composition of sentence meaning in order to
see what is involved.

1.2.2 Grammatical meaning

For a change, we will consider a new example.

(2) The dog ate the yellow socks.

Let us assume that we have assessed the lexical meanings of the words in (2): the, dog,
eat, yellow and socks. There are no larger units in the sentence with lexical meaning;
the rest of the interpretation is composition. The words in (2) occur in particular
grammatical forms. The verb form ate is past tense – more precisely: simple past
tense rather than progressive (was eating); it is in the indicative mood rather than
in the conditional (would eat), it is active rather than passive (was eaten), it is not
negated (did not eat). The noun socks is plural; dog is singular, by absence of plural -s.
The adjective yellow is neither comparative (yellower) nor superlative (yellowest), but
is given in its basic form called ‘positive’. The forms of the words matter directly for
their meaning, and consequently for the meaning of the whole sentence. The singular
noun dog has a different meaning from the plural noun dogs: dog refers to a single
creature of this kind, and dogs to more than one. Likewise, the meaning of present
tense eat(s) is not the same as that of past tense ate, and the meaning of the simple
form ate is different from the meaning of the progressive form was/were eating. The
meaning of the simple past form with verbs such as eat is the combination of past
tense and perfective aspect. (Tense and aspect will be discussed in chapter 6 on
verbs.)
The meanings of different word forms are not all stored in our lexicon. Rather the
lexicon contains the meaning (or meanings, cf. chapter 3) of only one form of the
word. For a verb, this is a tenseless and aspectless active meaning, for a noun it is
 Meaning and semantics 9
4
its singular meaning and for an adjective its positive meaning. The meanings of
particular word forms are derived from the basic lexical meanings by general rules.
These are part of the apparatus we use in composition. We will call the meaning of
grammatical forms grammatical meaning. The meaning of a word in a particular
form is the combination of its basic lexical meaning and the grammatical meaning
of its form.
Word forms are often built by adding an affix to the invariable part of the word, its
stem. Affixes appended at the end of the word are called suffixes, those added at the
beginning are prefixes. It must be noted that not all differences in the grammatical
forms of words matter for their meaning. A certain form may be necessary just for
grammatical reasons. For example, a certain verb form may be obligatory depending
on the subject of the sentence (cf. I am vs she is, she sees vs you see). By contrast, the
grammatical number (singular or plural) of the nouns dog and sock in (2) can be
chosen independently of the construction in which they occur. Therefore, differences
in form only matter for meaning if – in a given construction – different forms can be
chosen freely. In addition, the different forms available must have different meanings.
If, for example, a verb has two different admissible past tense forms like spoiled and
spoilt, the choice of the form would not matter for its meaning. Also, it may be that
one form has a neutral meaning which subsumes the meanings of the alternative
forms. For example, in Korean nouns can take a plural suffix; it is, however, not
necessary to make use of this option in order to refer to a multitude of instances.
Therefore, the basic form of the noun without a plural suffix has a neutral meaning
and does not carry grammatical meaning.
We can sum up these considerations in the following definition of grammatical
meaning:

DEFINITION 2 Grammatical meaning

The form of a word carries grammatical meaning, if
(i) in the given construction alternative forms are admissible
(ii) different forms yield different meanings
(iii) the form chosen does not have a neutral meaning.

Languages differ considerably in what meanings they encode in grammatical forms.

Many languages do not obligatorily mark number on all nouns; others do not have
5
non-positive forms of adjectives or lack tense.

4 In some cases, certain forms of words may have a special lexical meaning, such as glasses as
opposed to glass, or used to as opposed to to use. Some nouns are only used in the plural (trousers);
for certain others the distinction does not matter (logic, logics).
5 See Corbett (2000) for a survey on systems of grammatical number including missing number;
Dryer (2011) offers an online map of forms of number marking for more than 1000 languages
([Link] For tenseless languages see Comrie (1985: 2.5).
 10 Understanding semantics

1.2.3 Syntactic structure

As the last step of composition, the meanings of the words in their given forms are
combined into a whole, the meaning of the sentence. This process is guided by the
syntactic structure of the sentence (this is, for the most part, what grammar is good
for: to guide the interpretation of complex expressions). Let us first determine which
words in (2) belong together. The words the dog form a syntactic unit, a constituent
in syntactic terminology. This kind of constituent is called a noun phrase, NP
for short. The words the yellow socks form another NP; it contains an adjective
in addition to the article and the noun. Actually, the adjective and the noun form
another constituent within the NP. The combination of words into larger syntactic
constituents is governed by the rules of grammar. There is a rule for combining
adjectives with nouns, and another rule for combining a noun, or an adjective-noun
combination, with an article (the article comes first).
Given such rules for forming larger syntactic units we need corresponding
composition rules, in this case:
∑ a rule for deriving the meaning of an adjective-noun combination (yellow socks)
from the meaning of the adjective and the meaning of the noun
∑ a rule for deriving the meaning of an article with a noun (the + dog) or a noun
with adjective(s) (the + yellow socks) from the meaning of the article and the
meaning of the noun, or the noun with an adjective
We will not try to specify such rules now; they will be dealt with in chapters 4, 5
and 13.
Having assessed the dog and the yellow socks as complex constituents, we turn
to the total structure of the sentence. It consists of these two NPs and the verb ate.
These three parts are grammatically related as follows: the verb is the predicate of the
sentence, the NP the dog is its subject and the yellow socks its direct object. The verb
and the direct object form a constituent, known as verb phrase, or VP, which is then
combined with the subject NP to form the complete sentence. We therefore need two
more composition rules:
∑ a rule for deriving the meaning of a VP (ate + the yellow socks) from the meaning
of the verb and the meaning of the direct object NP
∑ a rule for deriving the meaning of a sentence (the dog + ate the yellow socks) from
the meaning of the subject NP and the meaning of the VP
Again, these rules are not trivial. Roughly speaking, the composition works as follows:
the verb eat in its given ‘active’ form means an event which necessarily involves two
elements, an eater and something that is eaten; the direct object NP contributes a
description of the object that is eaten, and the subject NP a description of the eater.

1.2.4 The Principle of Compositionality

Let us sum up the general results we can draw from this example. The syntactic
rules of a language allow the formation of complex expressions from what will be
 Meaning and semantics 11

Figure 1.1
The process of composition

GRAMMAR SEMANTICS

complex compositional meaning

expression of the complex

combine expressions compose meanings

basic expressions compositional meanings

in a particular form of the basic expressions
in their given forms

choose grammatical add grammatical

forms meaning

basic expressions lexical meanings

of basic expressions

called basic expressions. (Basic expressions are expressions with a lexical meaning.)
The meaning of complex expressions is determined by semantic composition. This
mechanism draws on three sources:
1 The lexical meanings of the basic expressions

2 The grammatical forms of the basic expressions

3 The syntactic structure of the complex expression

The general scheme in Fig. 1.1 shows that semantic composition is thought of as a
so-called bottom-up process: it proceeds from the basic units to the complex ones.
The lexical meanings of the smallest units serve as input for the rules of grammatical
meaning, whose output is the input for the composition rules. The converse of a
bottom-up process is a top-down process. If semantic interpretation were a top-
down process, this would mean that the meanings of words are derived from the
meanings of sentences.
That complex expressions receive their meaning by the process of composition is
the central idea underlying semantics. This is called the Principle of Compositionality.
The principle is attributed to the German philosopher, logician and mathematician
Gottlob Frege (1845–1925), and sometime called Frege’s Principle. Although he
obviously applied the principle, there is no passage in his publications that could
serve as a quotation.
 12 Understanding semantics

DEFINITION 3 Principle of Compositionality

The meaning of a complex expression is determined by the lexical meanings
of its components, their grammatical meanings and the syntactic structure of
the whole.

The principle implies that the meanings of complex expressions are fully determined
by the three sources mentioned, i.e. by the linguistic input alone. The principle,
therefore, does not apply to utterance meaning and communicative meaning because
at these levels non-linguistic context knowledge comes into play.

1.2.5 The semantics of word formation

Just like sentence formation, word formation has two sides: a form side and a meaning
side. Along with the formation of grammatical word forms, the form side of word
formation belongs to the domain of morphology, the area of linguistics concerned with
the forms of words. The two main mechanisms of word formation are derivation and
compounding. In the case of derivation, a given word is modified, usually by adding
an affix. Examples are the adjective drink-able, the noun drink-er or the verb en-slave.
There is also conversion – the use of a word in a different word class without changing
its form, for example the noun drink converted from the verb drink or the verb bottle
converted from the noun bottle. In English, conversion is very frequent. The other major
mechanism, compounding, is the combination of two or more words into one. Some
examples in this chapter are word meaning, content word, speech act and composition
rule. The products of word formation are called complex words, including the products
of conversion, even though nothing is added to the word form.
The semantics of word formation is a field that is much less clear than sentence
semantics. There certainly are patterns, however: certain conversions, derivations
and compounds are regularly interpreted in a particular way. Let me just give four
examples:
∑ suffixing a verb V with -able produces an adjective meaning ›one can V it‹: drink-
able, read-able, compar-able, deriv-able
∑ suffixing a verb V with -er produces a noun meaning ›someone who Vs‹ : driv-er,
los-er, speak-er, bak-er
∑ prefixing a verb V with un- produces a verb which denotes the reversal of what is
done by V-ing: un-do, un-zip, un-plug, un-tie
∑ prefixing a verb V with out produces a verb which means ›doing V better, or
more‹: out-run, out-play, out-number, out-weigh
Such patterns can be defined as pairings of formation rules and corresponding
interpretation rules. If they can be applied to an open input class, they are called
productive. Productive patterns crucially rely on the fact that there is a general
interpretation rule for their productions; otherwise they could not be freely applied.
 Meaning and semantics 13

However, the semantics of word formation is complicated by the fact that there
are often several interpretation rules for the same formation rule. This is a situation
quite different from the composition of sentence meaning where, as a rule, there
is only one composition rule for each syntactic rule. Compounds in particular are
notoriously manifold in how the meanings of the parts are related: a ‘book title’ is
a title that names a book, a ‘book shelf ’ is a shelf for books, a ‘book shop’ is a shop
where books are sold, and so on.
Another reason for the complexity of word formation semantics is the existence
of so many cases with unpredictable, lexicalized meanings. These blur the picture of
the semantic rules of word formation. If you take a look into a standard dictionary
you’ll find that very many entries are complex words. They are listed in the dictionary
because their meanings are irregular – otherwise there would be no need to include
them for explanation. Extreme cases are words like butterfly; the word looks like a
compound of butter and fly, but its meaning has nothing to do with ›butter‹ and
little to do with ›fly‹. Very frequent are complex words with special meanings that
are narrower than their regular meaning, e.g. drinker, which does not just mean
›someone who drinks‹, but rather ›someone who regularly drinks too much alcohol‹.
When two nouns occur in a sentence, like book and shelf or book and shop in (3),
often the sentence tells us how they are to be linked semantically:

(3) a. Ann put the book onto the shelf.

b. She had bought it in the shop around the corner.

In (3a) we see that the shelf is something the book is put onto, in (3b) that the
shop is something where the book was bought. The respective verb specifies a
semantic relation between the two nouns. With compounds, there is nothing like
this to help us to know what the two parts have to do with each other. They are
just jammed together. There are authors who suggest that compounding is a ‘relic
of protolanguage’ (Jackendoff 2009:111). According to the theory of protolanguage
(Bickerton 1992), there was a stage in the evolution of language where there were
words with meanings but not yet grammar. Words were just somehow combined; no
functional elements, no word classes, no rules for sentences. According to Bickerton,
protolanguage still exists, for example as an early stage in language acquisition or
in the speech of aphasics who have lost grammar. Jackendoff adds compounding as
another case.
If the way in which two elements are to be semantically combined is not explicitly
expressed, there is more room for interpretation. Nevertheless, the interpretation of
compounds is not just mere guessing. It cannot be, for we obviously agree on how to
interpret regular compounds. The reason for this is that the way semantically to link
a noun to another noun is often built into their meanings. It is part of the meaning
of shop that a shop is a place where things are sold, and it is part of the meaning of
book that it is some kind of artefact which can be bought. Putting this information
together leads us to the interpretation of book shop. We will turn to the semantics of
word formation in various places in this book (8.2.2, 11.6.2, 12.2.2 and 12.3.3).
 14 Understanding semantics

1.3 SEMANTICS: ITS SCOPE AND LIMITS

Obviously, we are able to understand sentences in isolation, for example if we find

them written on a piece of paper or appearing on a screen of our computer. We
know word meanings; we know the meanings of grammatical forms; we know how
to combine the meanings of the words in a complex expression. We need not have
a concrete CoU in order to interpret a sentence. We can just stop interpreting at the
meaning level of expression meaning.
One way of explaining what semantics is about is to say that it describes this part of
our linguistic knowledge: the cognitive equipment that enables us to interpret regular
linguistic expressions out of context, simply as linguistic forms. We acquire this
cognitive equipment along with grammar when we learn our native language. And
we have practical evidence for assuming that this equipment is, by and large, uniform
among our speech community. We normally understand what others say and we are
normally understood – at least at the level of expression meaning.
Of course, there are considerable differences in lexical knowledge among speakers
of the same language. Other people may know certain words and their meanings
which we don’t, and vice versa, and sometimes people disagree on word meanings.
But even so, we know that these differences can be removed by explaining or
discussing word meanings. As to grammatical meanings and composition rules, we
very rarely seem to disagree with others. The cognitive equipment for interpreting
linguistic expressions is essentially shared within a speech community. Agreement
within the community is the result of a permanent synchronization of language
usage, and thereby linguistic knowledge.
This mentalist approach to semantics is adopted here. It takes the so-called
‘I-language’ as its essential object. ‘I-language’ means the mental language apparatus
of the individual speakers of a language. Making I-language the point of departure
allows one to pose the relevant questions: What are the meanings which we have
stored in our minds or compute compositionally? What kind of semantic operations
do we apply to meanings, such as the combination of meanings, or meaning shifts?
Which kind of information is involved at the three levels of interpretation? Such
questions help to say more precisely what belongs to the scope of semantics and what
is beyond its scope.

1.3.1 The scope of semantics

[Link] Explaining sentence meaning

According to the Principle of Compositionality, the following sub-disciplines of
semantics are required in order to account for our ability to interpret sentences in
isolation:
∑ lexical semantics: the investigation of expression meanings stored in the mental
lexicon (dog, sock)
 Meaning and semantics 15

∑ semantics of regular word formation: the investigation of the regular meanings

of words that are formed by the productive rules of word formation (joggable,
carp food)
∑ semantics of grammatical forms: the investigation of the meaning contribution
of grammatical forms
∑ compositional sentence semantics: the investigation of the rules that determine
how the meanings of the components of a complex expression interact and
combine
Often semantics is subdivided into two sub-disciplines only: lexical semantics is
then understood as also comprising regular word semantics, and the semantics of
grammatical forms is subsumed under sentence semantics.

[Link] Interfaces of expression meaning with other levels of interpretation

The domain of semantics is not confined to sentence meaning. It also concerns the
links of sentence meaning to utterance meaning and communicative meaning. The
example in (1) illustrated two things that we do with the meaning of a sentence when
we try to make sense of an utterance of it.
First, we will try to fix references for those elements of the sentence that require
this. Elements such as the pronoun I call for fixing their reference and guide us in
doing so. Remember that the meaning of I is an instruction for determining the
referent of the pronoun as the one who has produced the utterance of this particular
‘I’. One can think of such an element as an ‘anchor’ in the sentence meaning which
tries to find a purchase in the context for anchoring the sentence meaning in the CoU.
Other such anchors are provided by definite articles, by tense or by specifications of
time or location like here and then. It is a task for semantics to investigate the nature
and function of such anchors. These anchors are technically called indexicals. They
will be dealt with in more detail in chapter 4. Indexicals are part of what is called
the interface between expression meaning and utterance meaning. This interface
consists of those components which link the level of sentence meaning to the level of
utterance meaning. It, too, belongs to the domain of semantics.
Second, there is the aspect of what expressions can mean when used in context,
in addition to what they literally mean. It may happen that we are led to shift lexical
meanings when we try to fix the reference of a sentence in a satisfactory way. This is
what we saw happen to the word bicycle in the second scenario, where it was taken in
the sense ›card with a picture of a bicycle‹. Such shifts take place before the reference
is fixed. They, too, belong to our cognitive semantic equipment. They constitute
another component of the interface between expression meaning and utterance
meaning. We will deal with them in the second part of chapter 3.
There is also an interface of expression meaning with communicative meaning. It
is constituted by elements that guide the interpretation of an utterance as a speech
act. These elements include grammatical means of indicating different types of
sentences such as declarative, interrogative or imperative. Also to be included are
 16 Understanding semantics

elements such as the indication of formality or politeness or elements that directly

serve certain speech acts, like please or goodbye (see 2.3 on social meaning).
We can now define the discipline of semantics much more precisely:

DEFINITION 4 Semantics
Semantics is the study of the meanings of linguistic expressions, either
simple or complex, taken in isolation. It further accounts for the interfaces of
expression meaning with utterance meaning and communicative meaning.

1.3.2 Beyond semantics

The approach to semantics taken here draws a clear boundary. Semantics ends
where contextual knowledge comes in. Thus, utterance meaning and communicative
meaning are beyond semantics; they fall into the domain of pragmatics.
Another important point of demarcation concerns the lexical meaning of content
words. Obviously, people vary greatly in how much knowledge they have about certain
things. Is all we can know about avocados, for instance, to be considered the lexical
meaning of the word avocado? This cannot be. Otherwise the lexical knowledge of
most content words would vary too much between experts and plain language users.
Rather, the meaning of a word is something like the common denominator of the
content shared in a speech community. The actual conventional meaning is a lean
bundle of information, just enough to secure efficient communication. Therefore,
word meaning needs to be distinguished from general world knowledge. This issue
will be taken up when we discuss connotations in the next chapter (2.5), and later in
11.6, when we will distinguish between semantic knowledge and cultural knowledge,
in the context of cognitive semantics.

EXERCISES

1. Explain the distinction between the three levels of meaning in your own words.
Part of the exercises will always be to define central terms introduced in the chapter
in your own words. In order to acquire new words, it is very important that you
really make active use of them. Do not copy the definitions from the text, but try to
explain them out of your own understanding. It may be very useful to work on the
answers together with others.
2. Sue tells Martin: ‘I don’t care if you use my microphone.’
Which one of the three levels of meaning is addressed in the following questions?
Give your reasons for the answer.
a. What is the meaning of microphone?
b. Which microphone is meant?
c. Is this an offer?
d. Does the sentence relate to one or several microphones?
 Meaning and semantics 17

3. The square brackets in the following sentence indicate constituent structure.

(The words within a pair of brackets form a constituent.)
[I [[don’t [know]] [where [[the kids] are]]]]
a. How many composition rules are needed for this sentence? (You need not
formulate the composition rules.)
b. Determine word by word if the word form carries grammatical meaning. (You
need not specify the grammatical meanings.)
4. Describe the meanings of the following compounds. Try to explain how the
meanings come about:
a. schoolboy b. schoolmate c. schoolhouse
5. Read chapter 1 of Isac & Reiss (2008) on I-language.

FURTHER READING

1.1 Lyons (1995, ch. 1) on levels of meaning. Verschueren (1999) ch. 1 on inferences
and speech acts, ch. 3 on the role of context in interpretation. Levinson (1983) on
Austin’s speech act theory and Grice’s theory of implicatures; Huang (2007) on
speech act theory and relevance theory.
1.2 Van Valin (2001) and Tallerman (2011) on elementary syntax. On word formation
see Plag (2003) and ch. 19 by Laurie Bauer and Rodney Huddleston, in Huddleston &
Pullum (2002), Olsen (2012) on the meaning of compounds.
1.3 Isac & Reiss (2008, ch. 1) for an introductory definition of I-language; Huang
(2007, ch. 7) on the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.
 2
?

Dimensions of meaning

This chapter will try to convey a more precise idea about expression meaning. In
the first part about descriptive meaning, we will consider the relationship between
meaning, reference and truth. The second part is concerned with non-descriptive
meaning, i.e. dimensions of lexical meaning that are relevant on the level of social
interaction or for the expression of subjective attitudes and evaluations.

2.1 MEANINGS ARE CONCEPTS

In order to understand what kind of entities word and sentence meanings are, the
best thing we can do is consider the role that meanings play in actual communication.
We will discuss another concrete example and assume a CoU that takes up scenario 1
from 1.1.2: Mary, just back from her trip, finds her daughter Sheila quite upset. Sheila
has spent the time with Mary’s dog Ken, and the two do not like each other. When
asked what happened, Sheila answers:

(1) The dog has ruined my blue skirt!

Let us suppose that what Sheila says is true and that Mary believes what Sheila
says. Mary will then know something she did not know before: that Ken has ruined
Sheila’s blue skirt. She knows this because Sheila said (1) and because this sentence
has the meaning it has. Let us take a closer look at how the transfer of information by
such a sentence works, first for a single word and then for the whole sentence.

2.1.1 The meaning of a word

We assume that Sheila is referring to Ken. What enables Mary to recognize that?
Sheila used the words the dog: the definite article the and the noun dog. Both play
an important role. The main information is conveyed by the noun. It specifies the
referent as an entity of a certain kind, namely a dog. What entitles us to say so? It
is the fact that the word dog means what it means. When you were asked to explain
what the word dog means, you will probably say that dogs are a certain kind of
medium-sized animal with four legs and a tail, that they are often kept as pets, that
they bark, that they may bite, etc. In other words, you will most likely give a general
description of dogs. This is an adequate reaction: giving a general description of dogs
may well count as an explanation of the meaning of dog. At least roughly, the meaning
 Dimensions of meaning 19

of such words may safely be regarded as a description of the kind of thing the word
can be used for.
Now, a very important point to realize is this: the word does not carry this
description with it. This can be seen from the trivial fact that words which we do not
know do not have any meaning to us. What a word in fact carries with it when it is
spoken and heard is its sound form (or its spelling, if it is written). When Sheila says
the word dog, she produces a certain sound pattern. The respective sound pattern
is stored in Mary’s mind as part of her linguistic knowledge and enables her to
recognize the word when she hears it.
The meaning of the word dog, i.e. the description of dogs, must also be something
residing in Mary’s mind. It must be knowledge directly linked to the sound pattern of
the word. The meaning is therefore a mental description. For mental descriptions in
1
general, the term concept will be used. A concept for a kind, or category, of entities
is knowledge that allows us to discriminate entities of that kind from entities of other
kinds. A concept should not be equated with a visual image. Many categories we have
words for, like mistake, thought, noise, structure, mood, are not categories of visible
things. But even for categories of visible things such as dogs, the mental description
is by no means exhausted by a specification of their visual appearance. The dog
concept, for example, also specifies the behaviour of dogs and how dogs may matter
for us (as pets, watch dogs, guide-dogs, dangerous animals that may attack us, etc.).
We can now give a partial answer to the question of how Mary is able to recognize
that Sheila is referring to Ken: Sheila acoustically produces the word dog; Mary
recognizes the sound pattern; in her mind the pattern is linked to the meaning of the
2
word dog, the concept ›dog‹; the concept is a mental description of a potential referent.
So due to the use of the word dog, Mary knows what kind of entity Sheila is referring to.
That Mary has the concept ›dog‹ linked to the sound pattern of dog in her mind
is, of course, only part of the story. Sheila must have the same concept in her mind
linked to the same sound pattern. More generally, a word can only be considered
established if its form and meaning are linked in the minds of a great number of
language users.
Still, we have not explained how Mary is led to assume that Sheila refers to this
particular dog. The crucial clue to an explanation is the definite article the. Had Sheila
used the indefinite article a instead, Mary would not have concluded that Sheila was
referring to Ken. What is the meaning of the definite article? It does not provide a
direct cue to Ken, but it signals that the description supplied by the following noun
applies to an entity in the given CoU which the addressees are supposed to be able to
sort out. Therefore the article will cause Mary to ask herself which entity in the given
3
CoU fulfils these conditions.

1 In Chapter 11 on cognitive semantics the notions ‘concept’ and ‘category’ will be treated in more
depth and detail. For the present purposes you may take a category as a set of entities of the same
kind.
2 This kind of quote will be used for concepts, and meanings in general: ›x-y-z‹ is the concept that
constitutes the meaning of the expression x-y-z.
3 We will have a much closer look at the meaning of the definite article in 4.4.2.
 20 Understanding semantics

This is how far the meanings of the words the dog take us in reconstructing the
communication between Sheila and Mary with respect to the reference to this
dog Ken. For the conclusion that it is Ken which Sheila is referring to, Mary needs
extra-linguistic context information. The fact that Sheila is using the definite article
restricts the choice of candidate dogs to those Mary and Sheila both know. The
family’s dog Ken is a privileged candidate, since he is firmly established as ‘the dog’
in the given context.

2.1.2 The meaning of a sentence

In her mind, Mary has the forms and meanings of all words in (1) at her disposal.
She also knows the grammatical meanings of the singular form, of the positive form
of the adjective and of the indicative present perfect form of the verb (recall 1.2.1).
Applying all this and her knowledge of grammar to the linguistic input, she will be
able to compose the expression meaning of the whole sentence (1.2). The result is one
complex concept which combines the meanings of all elements of the sentence. Let
us call this a concept for a situation. The main component of the situation concept
is the concept ›ruin‹ contributed by the verb. It is of central importance because
4
it connects all other elements. As a concept for an event of the kind ‘x ruins y’ it
involves three elements: the event itself, the ruiner x and the ruined object y. In the
complete situation concept, the event is described as one of ruining, the ruiner is
described as a dog that is identifiable in the given CoU, the ruined object is described
as a skirt, a blue one, linked to the speaker (recall 1.1.1 for the meaning of possessive
pronouns like my and your); the present perfect tense contributes the specification
that the situation at the time of utterance results from a previous event of the kind
indicated. Thus the meaning of the sentence as a whole is a concept for a specific kind
of situation. It can roughly be described as in (2). The description does not contain
an explanation of the content-word meanings, but it makes explicit the contribution
of the functional elements (1.1.1).

(2) ›the situation at the time of utterance results from a previous event in which a
dog that is uniquely determined in the CoU ruined a blue skirt which is uniquely
determined by its being linked to the speaker‹.

What was said about the meanings of words and sentences can be summed up as
follows:

DEFINITION 1 Meanings of content words and sentences

The meaning of a content word (noun, verb, adjective), is a concept that
provides a mental description of a certain kind of entity.
The meaning of a sentence is a concept that provides a mental description of
a certain kind of situation.

4 See chapter 5 on predication.

 Dimensions of meaning 21

2.2 DESCRIPTIVE MEANING

In the previous section it was established that expression meanings are concepts.
Actually the discussion here and in chapter 1 was confined only to a certain
dimension of meaning, namely the dimension that bears on reference and truth. It is
called descriptive meaning, alternatively ‘propositional meaning’. We will elaborate
on descriptive meaning now, making more explicit how it is related to reference and
truth. We will turn to non-descriptive meaning in the second half of the chapter.

2.2.1 Descriptive meaning and reference

[Link] Reference and the descriptive meaning of words
When dealing with reference, the first thing to be observed is that, strictly speaking, it
is usually not simply words that have referents. If the sentence in (1) is true, it involves
reference to five things: the dog (an object, in the widest sense), the speaker’s blue skirt
(another object), the speaker herself, the ruining of the skirt (an event) and the time of
utterance (a time). Table 2.1 shows which elements of the sentence refer to these five
things. The subject NP and the object NP each have a referent; the possessive pronoun
within the object NP has a referent of its own. The finite verb contributes reference to
a certain kind of event and, due to its tense, to a certain time. The adjective blue has no
referent of its own, but it contributes to the description of the referent of the NP my blue
skirt. The example shows that the referring elements of the sentence can be phrases (e.g.
NPs), words (the verb) or grammatical forms (tense).

Table 2.1
Five referents of sentence (1)

Type Referent Referring element

object the dog NP the dog
object the speaker’s blue skirt NP my blue skirt
object the speaker poss. pronoun my
event ruining verb ruin
time utterance time tense has ___ed

All this notwithstanding, it makes sense to talk of the potential referents of

content words. Since the referent of an NP is essentially described by the noun, we
may loosely speak of it as the ‘referent of the noun’. Analogously, we can talk of the
‘referent of a verb’. Adjectives never have a referent of their own, but they always
describe the referent of some NP (see 5.4 for details). Thus, still more loosely
speaking, we may extend the notion of referent to adjectives, keeping in mind that
their ‘referents’ are borrowed, as it were. In simple words, a potential referent of
a content word is whatever can be called so. If the notion of potential referent is
 22 Understanding semantics

extended to all content words, descriptive meaning can be defined in a way that
relates it directly to reference:

DEFINITION 2 Descriptive meaning of content words

The descriptive meaning of a content word is a concept for its potential
referents.

When a sentence is used in a particular CoU, the addressees will try to fix concrete
referents that match the descriptions. However, and this is a very important point, it
may be impossible to fix referents, if the sentence is not true. Consider the sentence
in (3):

(3) There is a letter for you.

Let us assume that Sheila says so to her mother, but that she is not telling the truth:
there is no letter for Mary. There may be a letter, but not for her, or no letter at all. In
any event, if the sentence is not true, the NP a letter for you lacks a referent. Usually,
the finite verb of the sentence has a concrete event referent only if the sentence is true.
For example, if (1) is false in some CoU, then the dog has not ruined the speaker’s
blue skirt and hence the verb ruin, in that CoU, fails to have a referent.

[Link] The descriptive meaning of sentences: propositions

There is no generally accepted notion for what a sentence as a whole refers to in a
given CoU. For lack of a better term it will be called the situation referred to. The
referents of the referring elements of the sentence are components of the situation
referred to; together, in their particular constellation, they form a complex state of
affairs. For the sentence in (1), the situation referred to in the given CoU comprises
the five referents listed in Table 2.1: (i) the dog Ken, (ii) the speaker Sheila, (iii) her
blue skirt, (iv) its being ruined by the dog, (v) the time referred to. The particular
constellation of these five referents is as the sentence has it: at the time referred to, the
blue skirt is Sheila’s and its condition is the result of it being ruined by the dog Ken.
The notion of the situation referred to only makes sense if the sentence is true: as
we have seen, some elements of the sentence may lack a referent if it is not true. Thus,
only if a sentence is true in a particular CoU does it properly refer to a situation of the
kind it describes. Therefore, whenever the term situation referred to is used, it will be
assumed that the sentence is true.
In analogy to the notion of potential referents we can talk of the situations
potentially referred to. These are all those situations that fit the mental description
provided by the meaning of the sentence, i.e. all the situations for which the sentence
is true. The descriptive meaning of a sentence can now be defined as in Definition 3.
In accordance with common terminology, the descriptive meaning of a sentence is
called its ‘proposition’. Alternatively, the proposition of a sentence will be referred to
as the ‘situation expressed’, or the ‘situation described’.
 Dimensions of meaning 23

DEFINITION 3 Proposition
The descriptive meaning of a sentence, its proposition, is a concept that
provides a mental description of the kind of situations it potentially refers to.

As we have seen, it is not only content words that shape the descriptive meaning
of the sentence. Functional elements such as pronouns and articles or tense, a
grammatical form, contribute to the proposition as well (recall the description of the
meaning of (1) given in (2)). Making use of Definition 3, we can give the following
general definition:

DEFINITION 4 Descriptive meaning of a word or a grammatical form

The descriptive meaning of a word or a grammatical form is its contribution
to the descriptive meanings of the sentences in which the word or grammatical
form may occur.

To sum up, the descriptive meaning of a sentence is a concept for a certain kind of
situation. If the sentence is true in a CoU, such a situation actually exists and can
be considered the referent of the sentence. The situation referred to contains the
referents of all referring elements of the sentence. Table 2.2 gives a survey of different
types of potentially referring expressions, their respective descriptive meanings and
types of referents.

Table 2.2
Descriptive meanings of the elements of sentence (1)

Expression Descriptive meaning Referent

(type) (* definitions adopted from The New Oxford Dictionary (type)
of English)
skirt ›a woman’s outer garment fastened around the waist object
(noun) and hanging down around the legs‹ *
eat ›put (food) into the mouth and chew and swallow it‹* event
(verb)
blue ›of a colour intermediate between green and violet, as object [borrowed]
(adjective) of the sky or sea on a sunny day‹*
the [noun] the referent of the noun is uniquely determined in the –
(article) given CoU
I the referent is the speaker object
(pronoun)
The dog has ruined my see (2) situation
blue skirt.
(sentence)
 24 Understanding semantics

2.2.2 Denotations and truth conditions

[Link] Denotations
The descriptive meaning of a content word is a concept for its potential referents. As
such it determines, or mentally describes, a category of entities. The meaning of dog
5
is a concept that determines the category DOG of all dogs, the verb concept ›ruin‹
determines the category RUIN of all events of ruining. The category determined by
the meaning of a content word is called its ‘denotation’; a word is said to ‘denote’ this
category.

DEFINITION 5 Denotation
The denotation of a content word is the category, or set, of all its potential
referents.

The denotation of a word is more than the set of all existing entities of that kind. It
includes fictitious referents as well as real ones, usual exemplars and unusual ones,
6
maybe even exemplars we cannot imagine because they are yet to be invented.
The relationship between a word, its meaning and its denotation is often depicted
in the semiotic triangle, a convenient schema which will be used in this volume in
a variety of forms. Figure 2.1 gives the semiotic triangle for the descriptive meaning
of content words as such. The arrow that connects the word with its denotation is
drawn with a broken line. This is to indicate that a word is not directly linked to its
denotation, but only indirectly via its descriptive meaning.

Figure 2.1
The semiotic triangle for a content word in general

content word

descriptive meaning: denotation:

a concept a category

5 SMALL CAPITALS are used for categories.

6 Yet the totality of existing exemplars of a category certainly is representative of the category, and
primarily shapes our concept for this kind of thing. We will occasionally use the term actual
denotation for the subset of the denotation that is formed by its real existing members. In 11.6
the notion of cultural category will be introduced for actual denotations. There we will see more
clearly what the relation is between the total denotation of a word and the corresponding cultural
category – and why the distinction is important.
 Dimensions of meaning 25

When a content word is actually used in a concrete CoU, we deal with a token of the
word, i.e. a particular spoken or written realization. The semiotic triangle then yields
a relationship between the word token, its meaning and its referent: the meaning
describes the referent to which the word, in the given CoU, refers (Fig. 2.2).

Figure 2.2
The semiotic triangle for a content word token

content word

descriptive meaning: referent in the

a concept world

[Link] Truth conditions

There is no established term for what would be the denotation of a sentence.
In analogy to the denotation of a content word it would be the set, or category, of
all situations to which the sentence can potentially refer, i.e. the category of
all situations in which the sentence is true. There is, however, another notion that
is quite common and directly related to the would-be denotation of a sentence: its
7
so-called truth conditions.

DEFINITION 6 Truth conditions

The truth conditions of a sentence are the conditions under which it is true.

We will say that a sentence has the truth value ‘true’ if it is true, and the truth value
‘false’ if it is false. In order to see what is meant by ‘truth conditions’, let us consider
sentence (1) once more. Obviously, this sentence taken as such is not merely true
or false; rather, its truth value depends on the CoU in which it is used: the question
8
of its truth or falsity arises only in relation to a given CoU. Sentence (1) is true in
a given CoU if there is a uniquely determined dog and a uniquely determined blue

7 The definition given here is sufficient for more general purposes. It will be made more precise in
4.7.3 in order to integrate presuppositions.
8 There are exceptional sentences that have the same truth value in all possible CoUs: these are called
‘logically true’ or ‘logically false’ (see 7.2); examples are sentences like ducks are birds, which is
logically true, or two times three is seven, a logically false sentence. Only for this kind of sentences,
can the truth value be determined independently of a given CoU.
 26 Understanding semantics

skirt belonging to the speaker. Additionally, the dog must have done something to the
skirt such that at the time of utterance the skirt is ‘ruined’. If all these conditions are
fulfilled in a given CoU, the sentence is true in this CoU, and vice versa: if the sentence
is true in a CoU, then all these conditions are fulfilled.
This is the reason why it is possible to communicate things by saying a sentence. We
utter a sentence like (1) or any other declarative sentence, and communicate, by the
way in which we speak, that what we say is true in the given CoU. The addressee(s)
will take the truth of the sentence for granted – assuming that they have no reason
to doubt what is being said – and conclude that its particular truth conditions are
fulfilled in the given CoU.
If sentence (1) were uttered by someone else and/or at some other time and/or
under different circumstances, it might well be false. Of course, this does not mean
that there is only one CoU where (1) is true. Many blue skirts belonging to somebody
have been, or will have been, ruined by some dog and in all these cases the owner
may truly utter sentence (1).
For an explicit formulation of the truth conditions of (1) we can resort to the
description of the meaning of (1) given in (2) above.

(4) Truth conditions of sentence (1):

The sentence The dog has ruined my blue skirt is true in a given CoU if and only
if the following holds:
‘The situation at the time of utterance results from a previous event in
which a dog that is uniquely determined in the CoU ruined a blue skirt
which is uniquely determined by its being linked to the speaker.’

A proper definition of the truth conditions of a sentence S always takes this form:

‘S is true in a given CoU if and only if …’

‘If and only if ’ – abbreviated ‘iff ’ – means ‘if ’ in both directions: ‘S is true if the truth
conditions hold, and if the truth conditions hold, then S is true.’
We can now see that the notion of truth conditions is equivalent to the notion of
the denotation of a sentence. The denotation of a sentence would be the category, or
set, of all the situations the sentence can refer to. If one knows the truth conditions of
a sentence, one knows which situations the sentence can refer to: to those which are
part of a CoU where the sentence is true. Conversely, if one knows which situations a
sentence can refer to, one is able to define its truth conditions: the sentence is true in
a CoU iff this CoU comprises a situation that the sentence can refer to.
In analogy to Fig. 2.1, the connection between a sentence, its proposition and its
truth conditions can be put as follows: the descriptive meaning of the sentence is its
proposition, and the proposition determines the truth conditions of the sentence.
The resulting picture is given in Fig. 2.3, another variant of the semiotic triangle.
 Dimensions of meaning 27

Figure 2.3
The semiotic triangle for a sentence

sentence

proposition: truth conditions

a complex concept

2.2.3 Proposition and sentence type

So far in this discussion of sentence meaning one aspect has been neglected: the
grammatical type of the sentence too contributes to its meaning, and this contribution
is non-descriptive. Compare, for example, sentence (1) to its interrogative counterpart
(5):

(1) The dog has ruined my blue skirt.

(5) Has the dog ruined my blue skirt?

The question describes exactly the same sort of situation. Hence it is considered to
have the same proposition as (1). Yet the total meaning of (5) is, of course, different
from the meaning of (1): (5) renders a question while (1) renders an assertion. The
difference in meaning is due to the grammatical forms of the sentences or, technically
speaking, to differences in grammatical sentence type. (1) is a so-called declarative
sentence. Declarative sentences in English have a certain word order: the finite verb is
in the second position of the sentence, usually after the subject. (5) is an interrogative
sentence of the yes-no-question type: in English, the finite verb is in the initial
position and has to be an auxiliary verb.
The semantic contribution of the grammatical sentence type is not part of
the proposition. For declarative sentences, it consists in presenting the situation
expressed as actually pertaining. This sentence type is therefore used for making
assertions, communicating information, etc. The interrogative sentence type, by
contrast, leaves open whether or not the situation pertains. It is therefore the
standard option to be chosen for asking questions.
Imperative sentences represent a third grammatical sentence type:
(6) Don’t ruin my blue skirt!

In English imperative sentences, the finite verb fills the first position of the sentence
and normally there is no explicit subject. Imperative sentences are used for
commands, advices and similar speech acts. The proposition of (6) would be that the
addressee(s) do not ruin the speaker’s blue skirt.