语义学资料

语义学

Leech’s 7 types of meaning.

Leech recognizes 7 types of meaning in his Semantics, first published in 1974, as follows:

1.conceptual meaning 概念意义logical, cognitive or denotative content. 逻辑的，认知的，

外延的内容Concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refers to. This refers to the definition given in the dictionary. It is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication and is integral to the essential functioning of language. Componential analysis, the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features. Man [+Human] [+Male] [+Adult] Girl [+Human] [-Male] [-Adult]

词的概念意义是一个词的中心意义或核心意义。如孩子的概念意义是未成年的人，man 的核心意义是成年男人。

2.Associative meaning:meaning associated with the conceptual meaning which can be

further divided into following types: a) connotative meaning b) social meaning c) affective meaning

d) reflected meaning e) collocative meaning

Connotative meaning. 伴随意义，内涵意义What is communicated by virtue of what language refers to. 通过语言所指所传达的意义。The communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. Connotative refers to some additional, especially emotive meaning. The difference between politician and statesman, for example, is connotative in that the former is derogatory and the latter is commendatory or neutral.

词的附带意义，具有感情色彩的意义。如汉语中的孩子有时会带有幼稚、不懂事的含义。

英语中有很多常用形容词往往都带有一种或一种以上的联想意义。如old(worn out),blue(down-hearted), sweet(lovely), tall(handsome)

3.Social meaning. 社会意义What is communicated of the social circumstances of language

use. 所传达的关于语言使用的社会环境的意义。What a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use.

Dialect: the language of a geographical region or of a social class.

Time: the language of the 18th c., etc.

Province(范围，职责): language of law, of science, of advertising, etc.

Status: polite, colloquial, slang, etc.

Modality: language of memoranda, lectures, jokes, etc.

Singularity奇特: the style of Dickens, etc.

反映出说话人社会背景和个人特征的意义，如方言，礼貌语，俚语和黑话等所表达的特殊附加意义。如，horse general（一般用语），steed poetic（诗歌用语），nag（俚语），gee-gee baby language(儿语).概念意义相同，社会意义不同。

4.Affective/emotive meaning.情感意义What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes

of the speaker and writer. including his attitude to the listener, or his attitude to something he is talking about. 所传达的关于说话人/作者感情、态度方面的意义。

表示说话人感情和态度的一种附加意义. 如，干部，当官的，概念意义相同，感情色彩不同，前者中性，或褒义，后者贬义。

I?m terribly sorry to inte rrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to lower you voice a little. Will you belt up.

Childlike-childish；slender/slim-skinny

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5.Reflected meaning. 反射意义What is communicated through association with another sense

of the same expression. 通过同一表达式的其他意思所传达的意义。Meaning arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense.

当一个词有多重意义，其中的某一意义会使人联想到另外一种意义，而这一意义往往可能是禁忌。如，When you hear …click the mouse twice?, you think of Gerry being hit twice by Tom.

The Comforter and The Holy Ghost (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, The third person of the Trinity.圣灵，基督教中圣父、圣子、圣灵三位一体的第三人称的提法)，受到日常的，非宗教意义的影响，comfort(安慰)和ghost(幽灵)。在使用时，前者会引起听话者对后者的联想，后者就是反映义。Many taboo terms are result of this. Cock

6.Collocative meaning. 搭配意义What is communicated through association with words

which tend to occur in environment of another word.通过词语的常用搭配而传达的意义。

由于某些词常常与某些词搭配，所形成的联想就称为搭配意义，也是附加意义。如，pretty 与woman, flower, color搭配，如果man搭配，给人带有女性特点的附加意义womanish。

7.Thematic meaning.主题意义，主位意义What is communicated by the way in which the

message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.通过顺序和重音这种组织信息的方式所传达的意义。

说话者或作者通过对信息的组织方式，如词序、焦点和强调等所传达的意义。如，主动被动。

Mrs. Bessie Smith donated the first prize. What did Bessie do? what did she donate?

The first prize was donated by Mrs. Bessie Smith. What happened to the first prize.

who was the prize donated by

From the perspective of communicative function. Theme/ Rheme theory: a sentence can be segmented into two parts: the first part, termed theme(主位), is the starting point, which usually conveys the Given information, seen by the speaker to be known to the addressee. The rest, termed the Rheme（述位）, conveys the information which is New, unknown or assumed by the speaker to be unknown to the addressee. （Prague School）

Our team (T) ||won (R).

The rest (T) || he spent on chemicals for his experiments(R).

语义学

Lexical relations

1.form relations—homonymy

homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, i.e. , different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both.

When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones. When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs. When two words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are complete homonyms.

E. g. Homophones: rain/reign, night/knight, piece/peace, lea漏洞; 裂隙k/leek韭葱

Homographs: tear v. / tear n., lead v./lead n.

Complete homonyms: fast adj. / fast v. 禁食（某种食物）;（尤指）斋戒.

Scale n标度; 刻度./scale v攀登, 爬（墙﹑悬崖等We can distinguish different types depending on their syntactic behavior, and spelling.

(1)lexemes of the same syntactic category and with the same spelling: e.g. lap, circuit of a

course跑道的一圈and lap, part of the body when sitting down.

(2)Of the same category, but with the same spelling, e.g. the verbs ring and wring拧或绞某

物使液体流出

(3)Of different categories, but with the same spelling: e.g. the verb keep and the noun keep食

物等生活必需品; 生活费

(4)Of different categories, and with different spelling: e.g. not, knot

2.sense relations

(1)synonymy

Synonymy refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning. Words that are close in meaning are called synonyms.

According to the way they differ, synonyms can be divided into the following groups:

a.dialectal synonyms—synonyms used in different regional dialects

These are words with more or lea the same meaning used in different regional dialects. BE and AE are the two majors geographical varieties of the English language.

BE: autumn, lift, luggage, lorry, petrol, flat, torch; AE: fall, elevator, baggage, truck, gasoline, apartment, flashlight. The dialectal synonyms can also be found within BE or AE itself. Girl is called lass or lassie in Scottish dialect, and liquor is called whiskey in Irish dialect.

b.Stylistic synonyms—synonyms differing in style, or degree of formality. In other words,

some words tend to be more formal, others casual, and still others neutral in style. E.g.

old man, daddy, dad, father, male parent; kid, child, offspring; kick the bucket, pop off, die, pass away, decease.

c.Synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning

There are words that bear the same meaning but express different emotions of the user, indicating the attitude or bias of the user toward what he is talking about. E.g. the two words, collaborator and accomplice are synonymous in that they share the meaning of a person who helps another, but they differ in that a collaborator helps another in doing something good, while an accomplice helps another in criminal act. so which one you would use depends on your evaluation of the nature of the activity the person concerned helps in.

d.collocational synonyms—some synonyms differ in their collocation, i.

e., in the words

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they go together with. This is a matter of usage. E.g. when we say that someone has done something wrong or even criminal, we can use accuse, charge, rebuke, but they are followed by different preposition—of, with and for. The word we use to describe food that has gone bad and is not fit for eating. Different adjectives are used for different kinds of food, e.g. rotten tomatoes, addled eggs, rancid bacon or butter, sour milk.

e.Semantically different synonyms—these are synonyms that differ slightly in what they

mean. For example, the two words amaze and astound are very close meaning to the word surprise, but have very subtle differences. While amaze suggests confusions and bewilderment, astound suggest difficulty in believing.

(2)Polysemy

While different words may have the same or similar meaning, the same one word may have more than one meaning. This is what we call polysemy, and such a word is called a polysemic word. There are many such words in English. The fact is the more commonly used a word is, the more likely it has acquired more than one meaning.

e.g. hook n. 1. a piece of material, usually metal, curved or bent and used to suspend, catch, hold, or pull something. 2. short for fish-hook. 3. a trap or snare. 4. chiefly US something that attracts or is intended to be an attraction. 5. something resembling a hook in design or use. 6.

a sharp bend or angle in a geological formation esp. a river. 7. boxing, short blow with the elbow bent. 8. (in cricket or golf) type of stroke that hooks the ball （板球或高尔夫球）击出曲线球. 9. surfing. The top of a breaking wave. 10. curved tool for cutting (grain, etc) or for chopping (branches) 镰刀; （砍树枝用的）弯刀

distinction between homonymy and polysemy

both deal with multiple sense of the same phonological word, but polysemy is invoked if the sense are judged to be related. Polysemous senses are listed under the same lexical entry, while homonymous senses are given in separate entries.

e.g. hooker 1 n. a commercial fishing boat using hooks and lines instead of nets.

hooker 2 n. 1. US and Canadian slang. a. a draught of alcoholic drinks, esp. of spirits. b.

a prostitute. 3. player in the front row of a scrum in Rugby football, who tries to hook the ball （橄榄球并列争球时位於前排的）钩射队员.

But the such distinctions are not always clear cut. Historically speaking, polysemy can be understood as the growth and development or change in the meaning of words. At first they got their primary meaning. Later on they gradually came to get the other meanings they now represent.

(3)Antonymy

The term is used for oppositeness of meaning; so words that are opposite in meaning are antonyms. We should not be misled into thinking that words contrast each other only on a single dimension; in fact oppositeness can be found on different dimensions and different kinds of antonyms have been recognized.

a.gradable antonyms

Some words are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. So it is a matter of degree. E.g. old and young are antonyms, but they stand for two extremes, between them there are intermediate forms representing different degrees of being old or young, such as middle-ages, mature, elderly. Between hot and cold, there are different qualities neither hot or cold, such as cool, warm and

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lukewarm温热的.

plementary antonyms

A pair of complementary antonyms is characterized by the feature that the denial of

one member of the pair implies the assertion of the other. In other words it is not a matter of degree between extremes, but a matter of either one or the other. E.g. a person can be either alive or dead, either male or female; there is no third possibility.

c.relational opposites/ converse antonymy

Pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items are called relational opposites. E.g. if A is the husband of B, then B is the wife of A. so husband and wife are a pair of relational opposites. Father and son, teacher and pupil, doctor and patient, buy and sell, let and rent, above and below.

(4)hyponymy

hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. It is a relation of inclusion, in terms of meaning, the super includes all its hyponyms. The word which is more general in meaning is called superordinate and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. E.g. S: flower; H: rose, tulip, carnation, lily, morning glory.

3.object relation

(1)meronymy

it is a term used to describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items. Thus cover and page are meronyms of book. We can identify this relationship by using sentence frames like X is part of Y, or Y ahs X, as in A page is part of a book, or A book has pages. Nose as a meronym of face, collar of shirt. Meronymy reflects hierarchical classifications in the lexicon somewhat like taxonomies:

car—wheel, engine, door, window, etc engine—piston, valve阀, etc. meronymy hierarchies are less clear-cut and regular than taxonomies.

Meronymy differs from hyponymy in transitivity. Hyponymy is always transitive, but meronymy may or may not be. A transitive example: nail as a meronym of finger, and finger of hand. We can see nail is a meronym of hand, for we can say A hand has nails. A non-transitive example is: pane is a meronym of window (a window has a pane), and window of room (a room has a window); but pane is not a meronym of a room, for we cannot say A room has a pane. Or hole is a meronym of button, and butto m of shirt, but we wouldn?t say that hole is a meronym of shirt (A shirt has holes!).

(2)member-collection

this is a relationship between the word for a unit and the usual word for a collection of the units.

e.g. ship-fleet; tree-forest; bird-flock; fish-shoal

(3) portion-mass

This is the relation between a mass noun and the usual unit of measurement or division.

Drop of liquid; grain of salt/sand/wheat; sheet of paper.

A count noun is added to the mass noun, making the resulting noun phrase into a count

nominal.

语义学

Conceptual metaphor

Metaphor

1. Traditional view

Aristotle’s comparison theory

Metaphor is a figure of speech which uses the name of one thing to refer to another. The essence of metaphor is using one word to substitute for another to express the same meaning, and there is a kind of comparison between the two words. Aristotle?s a metaphor A is B can be interpreted as A is like B in regard to C.

Quintilian’s Substitution theory

Metaphor is a figure of speech being a rhetorical substitution of literal expression.. For example, in “John is a lion”, the rhetoric lion is used to replace the literal expression “a courageous man”. For the subject A, there can be both metaphorical and literal description B and C, so that a metaphorical sentence A is B can be reduced to A is C, in which C has substituted B.

Both Aristotle?s and Quitilian?s interpretations view metaphor as merely a kind of figure of speech in the lexical level. In accordance with their views, metaphor is just an additional and dispensable ornament or decoration of language.

2. Cognitive view

Lakoff and Johnson are thought to be the most representative scholars who study metaphor in a cognitive way and their book “Metaphors We Live By” is regarded as the start of the new era of metaphor study. In this book, “Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” Thus Lakoff and Johnson defines metaphor as “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of things in terms of another.”

In cognitive view, metaphor is not merely a language phenomenon, but essentially a kind of perceptual and conceptualized device which helps human being understand the world. According to the Lakoff, metaphor is explained as mapping from one domain onto another; a metaphor is a mapping of the structure of a source domain onto a target domain. In other words, a conceptual metaphor contains two conceptual domains, the source domain and target domain, in which one domain is understood in terms of another. The target domain本体is the experience being described by the by the metaphor, the source domain喻体is the means that we use in order to describe the experience.

e.g. We?re wasting our time here.

This sentence is based on a metaphor “TIME IS MONEY”(time is limited resource, time is valuable commodity)in which the target domain, Time is conceptualized in terms of the source domain of Money. Very often, abstract experiences are described in terms of more concrete ones. In cognitive linguistics, metaphors are represented by a simple formula: X is Y, in which X is the target domain and Y is the source domain.

概念隐喻理论认为隐喻是从一个具体的概念域向一个抽象的概念域的系统映射；隐喻是思维问题，不是语言问题；隐喻是思维方式和认知手段。

3. Classification of conceptual metaphor

语义学

There are three categories of conceptual metaphors:

Ontological metaphors 本体性隐喻

Structural metaphors 结构性隐喻

Orientational metaphors 方位性隐喻

(1) Ontological metaphors

Human experiences with physical objects provide the basis for ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances. Categorize events, actions and states as substances.

Example: INFLATION IS AN ENEMY

a. Inflation is lowering our standard of living.

b. I f there is much more inflation, we?ll never survive.

c. We need to combat inflation.

d. Inflation is backing us into a corner.

Example: THE MIND IS A MACHINE

a. My mind just isn?t operating.

b. I?m a little rusty today.

c. We?re still trying to grind out the solution to this equation.

(2) Structural metaphors

It implies how one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another. 用一种较为熟悉的概念结构构造另一种相对陌生抽象的概念。

Example: ARGUMENT IS WAR

Your claims are indefensible.

He attacked every weak point in my argument.

His criticisms were right on target.

I demolished his argument.

I?ve never won an argument with him.

You disagree? OK, shoot!

If you use that strategy, he?ll wipe you out.

He shot down all of my arguments.

Lakoff and Johnson also put forward three characteristics of conceptual metaphor: universality, experientialism and systematicity.

(3) Orientational metaphors

Gives a concept a spatial orientation

Examples: HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN

I?m feeling up. That boosted my spirits. You?re in high spirits. My spirits rose.

I?m feeling down. He is really low these days. I fell into a depression. My spirits sank.

Examples: CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN

Wake up

He fell asleep

He?s under hypnosis

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