Cas LX 02 Semantics 3a. Word meaning 6ish Lexical semantics

CAS LX 502 Semantics

• 3a. Word meaning
• 3.1-3.6ish

Lexical semantics

• As a first approximation: The meaning (and relations between the meanings) of words.
• Pat is a bachelor.
• Pat is a man.
• Pat has an unpleasant personality.
• My sister is a bachelor.
• Tracy fed my dog.
• My dog ate.
• My dog is no longer hungry.

Lexical semantics

• What is it about bachelor that tells us (necessarily, inescapably) about maleness? What is it about feeding that tells us about eating?
• Bachelor and male share something in common—to be male…and to be unmarried.
• (And probably to be otherwise eligible to be married)

Lexical semantics

• Our knowledge about the words (and morphemes) of language can be thought of as a list, as a “mental dictionary”—a lexicon.

Bachelors and men

• If Pat is a bachelor, and to be a bachelor is to be a man and to be unmarried (and possibly to be eligible), then it follows that Pat is a man, that Pat is unmarried but eligible to be married. So, we have learned something about the meaning of bachelor and its relation to the meaning of man.
• Pat is a bachelor entails that Pat is a man.
• Entailment: X entails Y if there can be no situation in which X is true but Y is not.

Entailment and other reasoning

• Pat is a bachelor.
• Pat has an unpleasant personality.
• Pat has an unpleasant personality is not a necessary consequence of Pat is a bachelor. The first does not entail the second.
• It could be that Pat has joined a priesthood, it could be that Pat has unrealistically high standards, it could be…well, it could be any of a number of things.

Meaning and lexemes (lexical items)

• Lexicon = repository of unpredictable information.
• Pronunciation
• Meaning
• Grammatical category
• (Linked to) encyclopedic knowledge, register, frequency.
• …
• We may think of this in terms of lexemes, insofar as kick, kicked, kicks, kicking have a predictable part and an unpredictable part to their meaning. The dictionary/lexicon need list only (to) kick.