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Albu, Semantics 4
A lexeme may consist of just one meaningful part (boy, piano, happy) or more than one meaningful part (boyish,
pianist, unhappy). Both boy, piano, happy and ish, -ist, -un are called morphemes. The former are free morphemes
and the latter are bound morphemes. They are the smallest meaningful units in language.
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Idioms are exceptional. See section on idioms.
Here is a commonplace example: We know the meanings of red and balloon. The semantic rule to
interpret the combination red balloon adds the property "redness' to the properties of balloon. The
phrase the red balloon, because of the presence of the definite article the, means "a particular
instance of redness and balloonness". A semantic rule for the interpretation of the accounts for this.
On the other hand, the phrase large balloon would be interpreted by a different semantic rule,
because part of the meaning of large is that it is a relative concept. Similarly, we know that a big
mouse is much smaller than a small elephant.
There are many more rules involved in the semantics of noun phrases. For instance, the semantic
rule for prepositions indicates that two objects stand in a relationship determined by the meaning of
the particular preposition. Thus in the house with the green fence and the dog with black ears, the
preposition with indicates that the relationship between the two referring expressions is
"accompanies" or "is part of". Prepositions like on or under indicate a certain spatial relationship;
before and after establish a certain temporal relationship etc.
The syntactic structure of a phrase is essential to its meaning. Obviously, the dog on the bed has a
different meaning from the bed on the dog/; red brick is different from brick red. The last example
shows that the syntactic notion head plays a significant role in semantic rules. Since brick is the
head of the noun phrase the red brick, the meaning of a red brick is a certain kind of brick. On the
other hand, red is the head of the expression brick red, and the meaning of brick red is a certain
kind of red.
The semantic rules for adjectives are complex. A good friend is a kind of friend just as a red brick is
a kind of brick. But a false friend is not any kind of friend at all. The semantic rules for good and
false are quite different when these words modify friend. A third kind of rule governs adjectives like
alleged; the meaning of alleged murderer is someone accused of murder, but the semantic rules in
this case do not tell us whether an alleged murderer is or is not a murderer.
To conclude, meanings build on meanings. Noun phrases are combinations of meanings of nouns,
adjectives, articles, and even sentences. (The NP the fact he knew too much is a combination of the,
fact, and the sentence he knew too much.) In turn, sentences are combinations of Noun Phrases,
Verb Phrases, and so on. All these combinations make sense because the semantic rules of grammar
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The boy is the agent; the red brick is the theme; the wall is the source; the wagon is the goal. In
The boy broke the window with a red brick.
The boy is again the agent, a window is the theme, and the red brick is the instrument. These
examples show that the same noun phrase (the red brick) can function as a different thematic role
depending on the sentence.
The lexical entries for find and put would now look something like this:
find, V,______ NP, (Agent, Theme)
put, V,______ NP, PP, (Agent, Theme, Location)
This is to be read as find is a verb that occurs in the context of a NP Agent and a NP Theme. The
thematic roles are contained in parentheses. The first one states that the subject is an agent. The
remaining thematic roles belong to the categories for which the verb is subcategorized. The direct
object of both find and put will be a theme. The Prepositional Phrase for which put subcategorizes
will be a location.
Our knowledge of verbs includes their syntactic category, how they are subcategorized, and the
thematic roles that their NP subject and object(s) have, and this knowledge is explicitly represented
in the lexicon.
Several remarks are worth considering:
Thematic roles are the same in sentences that are paraphrases. In both these sentences
The dog bit the man.
The man was bitten by the dog.
the dog is the agent and the man is the theme.
Thematic roles may remain the same in sentences that are not paraphrases, as in the
following instances:
The boy opened the door with the key.
The key opened the door.
The door opened.
In all three of these sentences, the door is the theme, the thing that gets opened. In the first two
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The three examples illustrate the fact that English allows many different thematic roles to
be the subject of the sentence (that is, the first NP under the S). These sentences had as subjects an
agent (the boy), an instrument (the key), and a theme (the door). The sentences below illustrate
other kinds of subjects.
The hotel forbids dogs.
It seems that Samson has lost his strength.
In the first example, this hotel has the thematic role of location. In the second, the subject it is
"semantically empty", and lacks a semantic role entirely.
Contrast English with German. German is much "stingier" about which thematic roles can be
subjects. For example, in order to express the idea "this hotel forbids dogs" a German speaker
would have to say:
In diesem Hotel sind Hunde verboten.
literally, "in this hotel are dogs forbidden." German does not permit the thematic role of location to
occur as a subject; it must be expressed as a prepositional phrase. If we translated the English
sentence word for word into German, the result would be ungrammatical in German:
*Dieses Hotel verbietet Hunde.
Differences such as these between English and German show that learning a foreign language is not
a matter of simple word-for-word translation. You must learn the grammar, and that includes
learning the syntax and semantics and how the two interact.
In many languages thematic roles are reflected in the case assumed by the noun. The case, or
grammatical case, of a noun is the particular morphological shape that it takes. English does not
have an extensive case system, but the possessive form of a noun, as in the boy's red brick, is called
the genitive or possessive case.
Finnish: koulu- = "school", -sta ending that means "directional source" ---> koulusta = "from the
school". Similarly, kouluun (koulu + un) = "to the school".
Some of the information carried by grammatical case in languages like Finnish is borne by
prepositions in English. Thus from and to often indicate the semantic roles of source and goal.
Instrument is marked by with, Location by prepositions such as on and in, and Agent by in passive
sentences. The role of theme is generally unaccompanied by a preposition, as is agent when it is the
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In German, case distinctions appear on articles, as well as on nouns and adjectives. Thus in
Sie liebt den Mann.
"She loves the man", the article den is in the accusative case. In the nominative it would be der. In
Romanian case distinctions usually appear on articles. Languages with a rich system of cases are
often more constraining to which thematic roles can occur in subject position. German, as we saw
above, is one such language.
A universal principle has been proposed called the theta-criterion, which states in part that
a particular thematic role may occur only once in a sentence. Thus sentences like
*The boy opened the door with a key with a lock-pick.
are semantically anomalous because two noun phrases bear the thematic role of instrument.
In English the thematic role of possessive is indicated in two ways syntactically: either as the boy's
red hat or as the red hat of the boy. However, *the boy's red hat of Bill is semantically anomalous
according to the theta-criterion because both the boy and Bill have the semantic role of possessor.
Irrespective of how we label the semantic relations that exist between verbs and noun phrases, they
are part of every speaker's linguistic competence and accounts for much of the meaning of the
language.
Different authors have proposed different lists of thematic roles. This is a selection of relevant
terms3 accepted by many linguists:
1. Agent the initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition 9the prototypical agent is
animate); Mother baked some cakes. The dog bit my neighbour.
Note: If the action is performed without volition or awareness, the doer can be the CAUSE or
FORCE: The wind blew my car door open. In other cases the doer can be the Instigator (The
sergeant-major marched the recruted round the parade ground) or the Effector (John
accidentally knocked the vase on to the floor the agent-like entity supplies the energy but not
the will)
2. Patient the entity undergoing the effect of some action, often undergoing some change in state:
John cut the grass. The teacher punished the naughty boy. The sun melted the ice.
3. Theme the entity which is moved by an action or whose location is described; an unchanged
entity affected: John passed the ball wide. The book is on the table. John put on his hat.
Note: Some authors treat 2 and 3 as different names for the same role, OBJECTIVE,
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Examples:
Gina raised the car with a jack. = AGENT THEME INSTRUMENT.
They gave the workers a rise. = AGENT BENEFICIARY/RECIPIENT - THEME
Another example of how syntax and semantics interact has to do with reflexive pronouns, such as
herself or themselves. The meaning of a reflexive pronoun always refers back to some "antecedent".
In Jane bit herself, herself refers to Jane. Syntactically, reflexive pronouns and their antecedents
must occur under the same S in the Phrase Structure tree.
Sentence structure also plays a role in determining when a pronoun and a noun phrase in different
classes can be coreferential, that is, refer to the same object. For example in
John believes that he is a genius.
the pronoun he can be interpreted as John or as some person other than John. However in
He believes that John is a genius.
the coreferential interpretation is impossible. John and he cannot refer to the same person. A
pronoun cannot occur to the left of the noun phrase if the two refer to the same person. However,
the rule is not that simple. In the sentence
The fact that he is considered a genius bothers John.
he and John can be interpreted as coreferential. A somewhat complicated semantic rule that refers
to sentence structure is at work here. A precise statement of this rule goes beyond the scope of this
introductory text. The point is that syntax and semantics interrelate in complex ways.
We have knowledge of syntactic rules, semantic rules, and of how these rules interact. The fact that
we have this knowledge is demonstrated by our ability to make judgements of grammaticality,
recognize ambiguities and paraphrases, and know what the antecedents of pronouns are.
The "Truth" of Sentences
We have seen how sentence meaning is partially based on the meaning of its words and phrases.
Knowing the meaning of a declarative sentence means knowing under what circumstances that sentence
would be true. Those "circumstances" are called truth conditions of the sentence. In the world as we
know it, the sentence
The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776
is true and the sentence
The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1976.
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