Semantics
What is semantics?: Study of meaning of words, phrases and sentences.
1. Syntax and sentence interpretation (Sentential semantics)
Meaning is determined by not only meaning of each component of a sentence.
We will see how the positioning of words and phrases in syntactic structure
is also related to the entire meaning of a sentence, following the principle:
The principle of compositionality
The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its component
parts and the manner in which they are arranged in syntactic structure.
1. Structurally the same but the component parts are different
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Jane ate three apples.
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Mark sold three apples.
2. The component parts are the same but structurally different
1) Structural ambiguity
What is ambiguity: a phrase or a word has more than one distinct meaning.
Structural ambiguity: The same sequence of words have two or more meanings
based on the way they are combined.
1. pretty boys and girls
2.The boy kicked the girl with the wig.
3. The child hit the ball with the sticks.
4. The magician touched the child with the wand.
Are these ambiguous?
%% The meaning of a sentence is determined by meaning of each component
and its manner of combination.
Practice:
Paraphrase each of the following sentences in two different ways and
show each structure tree for each meaning.
1. John decided on the boat.
2. He bought small cakes and doughnuts.
2) Lexical ambiguity
e.g., I met him at the bank.
I bought a pen.
She can't bear a child.
What causes this ambiguity?
Homophone: a single phonetic form which has two or more meanings.
3) More ambiguity
Kicking baby considered to be healthy.
Large church plans collapse
Hershey bars protest
Police kill man with TV tuner
Retired priest may marry Springsteen