Introduction to Semantics: An Essential Guide to the Composition of Meaning

303 Pages·2013·3.74 MB·English

by  Thomas Ede Zimmermann

Introduction to Semantics

Introduction to
Semantics
An Essential Guide to the Composition
of Meaning
by
Thomas Ede Zimmermann
Wolfgang Sternefeld
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-030800-6
e-ISBN 978-3-11-031437-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Pianotypesetter © Josh Shayne
Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
♾ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
Preface
This is an introductory textbook on linguistic semantics, the study of mean-
inginlanguage. Itdoesnotrequire anyprior experience withlinguistics and
should be accessible to anyone with some high-school background in gram-
mar. Nordo readers need anyprevious knowledge of logic orset theory. We
mention this because in this respect our text differs from at least some of
the more traditional introductions. While relatively self-contained, this book
doesrequire somecuriosity andinquisitiveness onthepartofthereader, and
at times the stamina it takes to master new formal techniques and notation.
Numerous exercises scattered throughout the book will turn out to be par-
ticularly helpful in this respect; so readers are urged to take their time with
them and not give up too easily! Only if you are fully convinced that you
havefoundthesolution (orthattheexerciseisunsolvable) should youtakea
peek atthe appendix. The reward willbe athorough understanding of apart
of human cognition whose very existence, nature, and complexity you are
likely tonotevenhavenoticed before. Sobearwithusand beprepared fora
formidable intellectual experience.
Textbooksrarelycoverawholefieldandthisoneisnoexception. Limita-
tions of time,space, andcompetence have required ustobe selective, and at
timesabitsuperficial.Butthen,fromthereader’spointofview,atextbookis
only afirststepthatought tobefollowedbyamoreextensive exploration of
the field. Toencourage this, wehave included a number of references to the
literature aswell as some URLsthat wehope to be stable enough to survive
the next few years. And sometimes we have simply inserted a (cid:2) to indi-
catethatreadersshouldconsulttheirfavoriteinternetresourcestolearnmore
about a specific topic. Speaking of global notational conventions, weshould
alsomentionthatthroughout thetext,weuseEnglishandGermanexamples,
typographicallydistinguishingthetwoobjectlanguagesbyitalicsforEnglish
vs.asans-serif typefaceforGerman.Finally,exercises,sections,andchapters
marked with an asterisk are technically more involved digressions that may
beskippedonafirstandhastyreading.
The book has developed in three stages over a period of more than 10
years. At the beginning there were some 50 pages of German lecture notes
writteninthesecondhalfof2000.Thefirstauthor(TEZ)hadprovidedthese
notes as online material accompanying a first-year undergraduate introduc-
vi Preface
tory linguistics course atGoetheUniversity Frankfurt, wheretheyhavebeen
used by various members of the teaching staff for the same purpose ever
since; for copyright reasons, they are no longer publicly accessible. A few
yearslaterthesecondauthor(WS)cameacrossthesenotesandadaptedthem
foruseinintroductorysemanticsclassesattheUniversityofTübingen.Since
the courses were part of an international BA program, he translated the text
into English, at the same time modifying, shortening, and extending vari-
ouspassages whilekeepingsomeoftheGermanexamplestoallowforsome
variation in the data and the phenomena described. Most importantly, some
logic background was added and the parts on the syntax-semantics interface
increased in sophistication. When we finally decided to turn the class notes
into a self-contained semantics textbook, more topics were added, including
achapter onpresuppositions andoneoncompositional variablebinding.
Given this long history and the many hands the various predecessors of
this text have passed through, we are indebted to more people than we can
list by name. First and foremost, there are several generations of Frankfurt
and Tübingen students who have used our teaching material, and correctly
complained about difficult or clumsy passages, which wethen tried to avoid
inlaterversions.Nextcomethecolleagueswhohavebeenusingthematerial
inclass andhave givenustheir feedback and encouragement. Weonly men-
tionCécileMeier(Frankfurt)andSamFeatherston(Tübingen), whooverthe
yearshavegatheredmoreexperiencewiththeunderlyingmaterialthaneither
ofus. Thenthere arethose students and collaborators that took pains toread
the pre-final version of the manuscript, pointing out a host of errors, omis-
sions, andredundancies: JanKöpping, JacobSchmidkunz, andDavidLahm.
Finally,KirstenBrockusedherexpertisetoscrutinizewhatwethoughtwould
bethefinalversiontoactuallyproduceit.Manythankstoallofyou—andour
apologiestothosenotexplicitlymentioned. Ofcourse,wetakefullresponsi-
bilityfor(m)anyremainingerrors.
FrankfurtandTübingen, theIdesofMarch2013
TEZ&WS
PS: The authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order (in case the reader
hasn’t noticed).
Contents
Preface v
1 LiteralMeaning 1
1 HiddenSense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 IronyandImplicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 TheWayYouSayIt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4 DifficultSentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 LexicalSemantics 12
1 What’sinaWord? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2 HomonymyandPolysemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3 SenseRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4 SemanticNetworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3 StructuralAmbiguity 25
1 SomeElementaryExamples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2 ScopeandSyntacticDomains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3 SyntacticDomainsandReconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4 LogicalForm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.1 TheLFScopePrinciple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.2 QuantifierRaising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.3 OpaqueandTransparent Readings . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.4 MoreHiddenStructure* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4 IntroducingExtensions 58
1 Frege’sPrinciple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2 AFarewelltoPsychologism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3 ExtensionsforWordsandPhrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.1 ReferentialExpressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.2 CommonNouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.3 FunctionalNouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.4 VerbsandVerbPhrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4 TruthValuesasExtensions ofSentences . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5 ThematicRoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
viii Contents
5 ComposingExtensions 83
1 TruthTables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
2 ReferentialSubjectsandObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3 SetsandSet-Theoretic Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4 ReferentialArgumentsandFunctional Nouns . . . . . . . . . 98
5 AnalyzingStructuralAmbiguities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.1 LogicalConnectives: and andor . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.2 NominalModification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5.3 Calculating anAttachmentAmbiguity . . . . . . . . 111
5.4 PluralNPs* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6 Quantifiers 115
1 DeterminersandQuantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
2 NamesasQuantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
3 Type-DrivenInterpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4 Quantifying DPsinObjectPosition* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.1 Solution1:QuantifierRaising . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.2 Solution2:InSituInterpretation. . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
5 TheVerbtobe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
7 Propositions 138
1 Intensional Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
2 CasesandPropositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
3 LogicalSpace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4 Propositional LogicastheLogicofPropositions . . . . . . . 145
4.1 VennDiagramsandTruthTables . . . . . . . . . . . 145
4.2 LogicalConnectives Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4.3 MaterialImplication andValidInferences . . . . . . 155
5 LimitsandLimitationsofPropositional Logic . . . . . . . . 161
5.1 BeyondTruthFunctionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
5.2 Exclusiveor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.3 Non-ClausalConnectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
ix
8 Intensions 170
1 FromPropositions toIntensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
2 ComposingIntensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
3 Intensions andSenseRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
4 Compositional vs.LexicalSemantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
5 Hintikka’sAttitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
6 FromIntension toExtensionandBackAgain . . . . . . . . . 193
7 Tense,Time,andLogic* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
9 Presuppositions 205
1 TheDefiniteArticle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
2 MoreonEntailmentsandTruthValueGaps . . . . . . . . . . 211
3 Presupposition andAssertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
4 Presupposition andDiscourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
5 Accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
6 Presupposition Projection* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
10 CompositionalVariableBinding* 232
1 TheProblem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
2 Assignments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
3 Interpreting VariableBinding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
4 Compositionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
5 PredicateLogic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
5.1 BasicDefinitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
5.2 SomeVariantsandAlternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
5.3 PredicateLogicandCompositionality . . . . . . . . 248
5.4 Validity,LogicalEquivalence, andEntailment . . . . 249
6 TheLambdaOperator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
6.1 PredicateLogicwithLambdaTerms . . . . . . . . . 253
6.2 BeyondPredicateLogic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
SolutionstotheExercises 262
References 279
Index 287