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ROY S. CAPANGPANGAN
SEMIOTICS
(Charles Morris, 1938)the general science of
signs.
THREE BRANCHES OF INQUIRY
SYNTAX—the study of “formal relation of signs
to one another.”
SEMANTICS—the study of “the formal relation
of signs to the objects to which the signs are
applicable.”
PRAGMATICS—the study of “the relation of
signs to the interpreter.”
Syntax concerns properties of
expressions, such a as about well-
formedness; Semantics concerns relations
between expressions and what they are
“about”, such as reference and truth-
conditions; and Pragmatics concerns
relations between expressions, their
meanings, and their uses in context, such as
complicature.
The OBJECTIVES of FORMAL SEMANTICS:
1. Sense Relations
2. Truth Conditions
3. Inference
5. CONSISTENCY—the opposite of
inconsistency.
Examples:
EXAMPLES:
10. Litotes
=>exaggeration by understatement.
Blank has tried to create a complete
list of motivations for semantic change. They
can be summarized as:
Linguistic forces
Psychological forces
Socio-cultural forces
Cultural/encyclopedic forces
This list has been revised and slightly
enlarged by Grzega (2004):
Fuzziness (i.e., difficulties in classifying the
referent or attributing the right word to the
referent, thus mixing up designations)
Dominance of the Prototype (i.e., fuzzy
difference between superordinate and
subordinate term due to the monopoly of the
prototypical member of a category in the real
world)
Social Reasons (i.e., contact situation with
"undemarcation" effects)
Institutional and non-institutional linguistic
pre- and proscriptivism (i.e., legal and peer-
group linguistic pre- and proscriptivism,
aiming at "demarcation")
Flattery
Insult
Disguising Language (i.e., "mis-nomers")
Taboo (i.e., taboo concepts)
Aesthetic-Formal Reasons (i.e., avoidance of
words that are phonetically similar or
identical to negatively associated words)
Communicative-Formal Reasons (i.e.,
abolition of the ambiguity of forms in
context, keyword: "homonymic conflict and
polysemic conflict")
Word Play/Punning
Excessive Length of Words
Morphological Misinterpretation (keyword:
"folk-etymology", creation of transparency
by changes within a word)
Logical-Formal Reasons (keyword: "lexical
regularization", creation of consociation)
Desire for Plasticity (creation of a salient
motivation of a name)
Anthropological Salience of a Concept (i.e.,
anthropologically given emotionality of a
concept, "natural salience")
Culture-Induced Salience of a Concept
("cultural importance")
Changes in the Referents (i.e., changes in
the world)
World View Change (i.e., changes in the
categorization of the world)
Prestige/Fashion (based on the prestige of
another language or variety, of certain word-
formation patterns, or of certain
semasiological centers of expansion)
Changes in meaning are as
common as changes in form. Like the
latter they can be internally or externally
motivated. The equivalent to the
paradigm in morphology is, in
semantics, the word field in which words
and their meanings stand in a network
of relationships.
The alteration of meaning occurs
because words are constantly used and
what is intended by speakers is not
exactly the same each time. If a
different intention for a word is shared
by the speech community and becomes
established in usage then a semantic
change has occurred.
SOURCES:
1. www.wikipedia.org/semanticchange
2. Webster Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition
3. Lecture of B. H. Partee on Formal Semantics,
April 25, 2005 p.1-6
4. Handouts of Gerhard Jager: jaeger@ling.uni-
potsdam.de
TEST IV:
1. is about the meaning of syntactically complex
expressions. Literally means “using formal methods for
the study of meaning.”
2.Semantic change, also known as semantic
shift or semantic progression) that describes the evolution
of word usage.