Transcription
Hi everyone, welcome. Thanks for joining me in this video. I will be discussing semantics, which has to do with the study of meaning in terms of words, phrases, and sentences. Specifically, in this video, I'll be talking about lexical semantics, which has to do with the study of words.
Now, in this video, I'll be covering several concepts, including lexical relations, componential analysis, and prototype theory. First, let's clarify the scope of semantics itself. Semantics is concerned with denotational meaning rather than connotational meaning, meaning that semantics is focused on what something means rather than how it is used in context. That is the domain of pragmatics.
Now, for example, consider this image: Is this a chair? What about this? Or this? There's no easy answer to those questions, and hopefully, by the end of this video, you will see that it largely depends on the person being asked that question.
So first, let's talk about lexical relations. Now, lexical relations has to do with the meanings of words in relationship to one another, and there are several of these that we'll talk about. First, let's talk about synonymy. Synonyms are words with similar meanings, such as big and large, small and little, doctor and physician. Each pair there has very similar meanings. So they might be different words, but they have very similar meanings; those are synonyms.
Now, we could also talk about antonyms, which is the opposite, because antonyms are words that have opposite meanings. There's actually two types of antonyms: there's gradable antonymy and non-gradable antonymy. Gradable antonyms are those in which there's a kind of graded difference; it's something that you could imagine on a continuum or a spectrum. For example, wide and narrow; something could be kind of wide and kind of narrow. It's unclear where one stops and the other begins. Similarly, with kind of short and kind of tall, it's unclear where one stops and the other begins. So non-gradable antonyms are different; they are either one or the other, and they fail the "kind of" test. So you can either be alive or dead; you can't really say something is kind of alive or kind of dead—never mind all the zombies that you've seen in movies. If you think about the meaning of something as a living being, it's either alive or it's dead. Similarly, somebody could either be married or unmarried; you're either one or the other. There is no kind of in-between; it's not a graded category. Those are non-gradable antonyms.
Next, we can talk about hyponymy, and hyponymy is when the meaning of one form is actually included in the meaning of a larger other form. So, for example, a daisy is a hyponym of flower; a carrot is a hyponym of vegetable; aspen is a hyponym of tree; a cat is a hyponym of a vomit maker. These are all examples of the meaning of one word being included in the meaning of a larger category.
Now we can next talk about homophony, and homophony are forms that sound the exact same, and that's what the word means—homo as in same, and phone same sound—but they are actually spelled differently, and they have very unrelated meanings. So we could talk about sea, the sea as in the body of water, and we could talk about see as in the action that you perform with the eyes to look. We could also talk about bear as in being naked, and we could talk about bear as in the creature that you don't want to encounter in the woods. These are homophones. These are often confused with homonyms, so that means same name—homonym. So homonyms are forms that sound the same and they are spelled the same, but they have unrelated meanings. So, for example, consider the word bank as in the side of a river and bank as in a financial institution. They spell—they're spelled the same, they sound the same, but they have very unrelated meanings. We could also talk about a pen as in a writing instrument and a pen as in a small enclosed space where we might keep livestock or unruly children. In both of those examples, again, we're talking about forms that are the exact same; they're spelled the same, they sound the same, but unrelated meanings.
Now we could talk about polysemy, and polysemy has to do with words that are the same; they're spelled the same, they sound the same, but they have related meanings, often based on metaphor. So, for example, consider the foot as in an anatomical part, but we could also talk about the foot of a table or the foot of a mountain. So using the metaphor here of the anatomical part, that's sort of the start, the source for us to understand that it's the part of the table that's holding the rest of the table up, or the same thing with a mountain. Similarly, we could talk about a mole as in the mammal that burrows underground, spends most of its life in the subterranean environment, and we could also talk about a mole as in a spy or somebody who's been planted for the purpose of espionage. That's sort of using a metaphorical relationship with the animal, because it is a mole—as in a human being, a spy—is perceived as being hidden or unseen. That's polysemy—the poly meaning many and semy meaning meaning—so many meanings.
Next, we could talk about metonymy, and metonymy is really interesting because it's a big category, but it's really the idea that you're referring to one thing based on some close relationship to another thing, and this could be in terms of association. Like, for example, when a server says, "Table 14 needs water," of course, table 14 doesn't need anything; it's an inanimate object, but it is used to refer to the customer who is seated at that table; they're the ones who need water. So it's based on association, but we could also talk about metonymy in terms of referring to a container to talk about the contents, like when, for example, I say, "I ate the whole bag." I didn't literally eat the bag; if I did, I wouldn't be making this video; I would be in the hospital. So I'm just referring to bag to talk about the container—the chips that are inside of it, for example. But we could also talk about metonymy in terms of a part-whole relationship, where, for example, a captain might say on a boat, "All hands on deck." That means that the people themselves, they have to go up and do work; they have to be on deck, but we're just picking out one salient feature of the human being—the hand—to refer to the whole body. So incidentally, that last example of a part-whole relationship is often called synecdoche, and many scholars treat metonymy and synecdoche as two separate ideas. And also incidentally, if you're really interested in seeing a great example of synecdoche on film, I encourage you to watch *Synecdoche, New York*. It's a fantastic movie, and it really provides a cinematic display of this concept of a part-whole relationship, and I think Philip Seymour Hoffman's—Hoffman's best role. Anyway, I digress.
So now let's talk about componential analysis. Componential analysis involves analyzing the meaning of words based on certain identifiable semantic features. So, for example, we can take the word bird, and we can assign a number of semantic features to it based on what we see in the real world—that, for example, birds have feathers, they may sing songs, and they can fly. This is not an exact, exhaustive list, of course; it's just a really short and simple list, but this is probably what we most identify with birds, right? So this is really useful for differentiating the meaning of the word bird to compare—compared to other critters in the animal kingdom, such as a dog, because a dog has none of these things. But this approach is not without its problems. So, as you may have noticed, there is a reliance here on binary categorization, and that means that something either is or is not a member of a category, and that's kind of a problem because while a robin may sing songs, it may have feathers, and it may fly, what about a penguin? A penguin has none of these things, yet we still call it a bird. So this actually brings us to prototype theory, which addresses some of the problems with componential analysis.
Prototype theory addresses some of the problems with componential analysis, namely its reliance on binary semantic features, because prototype theory instead looks at meaning as a lot of gray area; it's a scaled idea here. So it's not as if something either is or is not a member of a category; it's whether or not something is or is not a best representation of that category. So all of this really started back in the 1970s with the work of Eleanor Rosch, who revolutionized the—the field of cognitive psychology and semantics in linguistics by looking at meaning in this way rather than in terms of a traditional uh Aristotelian—or coming from Aristotle—approach in which something either is or is not a member of a category.
So now we can return to this example of a bird and not look at it in terms of its semantic features, but look at it from a prototype perspective, and we can do this through a brief thought experiment. So if I ask you, "What is your birdiest bird?" That might sound like a strange question, but I am not asking what is your favorite bird. Rather, I'm asking, when I say the word bird, what type of bird appears in your mind? Now, depending on who you are and your immediate environment, you might say a robin or a sparrow, a hawk, perhaps an eagle, but you're not likely to say a penguin or an emu, an ostrich, or a roadrunner. All of those are, of course, birds, but they don't readily possess the qualities that we tend to identify with most birds. So some represent—some types of birds are better representations of that category than others, and this is the idea of prototype theory—that there are some representatives that are better for that category than others. Similarly, I could ask you, "What is your fruitiest fruit?" Another weird question, right? But I'm not asking your favorite fruit, but when I say fruit, what type of fruit appears in your mind? For most people—or well, depending on where you are raised, but most Americans might say an apple, an orange, a banana, but probably you're not going to say a tomato, because even though a tomato is technically a fruit, it doesn't possess the quality that we readily associate with fruit, which is sweetness. So again, some members of a category are better representatives of that category than others.
So unfortunately, prototype theory is not without its problems, just like with componential analysis. Prototype theory really works best when we're talking about concrete objects, such as birds or fruit, but it's less useful when we're talking about abstract concepts, such as fear and love, in which a prototypical member of that category is more difficult to conceive of. Still, prototype theory is really useful for linguists who take especially a usage-based approach to the study of language, because it acknowledges meaning as a shifting, fluid thing that is also culturally determined. So depending on where you live, you're going to say that your prototypical fruit or your prototypical bird is different than perhaps somebody who is living in the United States. That's just based on the fruit and the birds that you see around you in your immediate environment. So it has its advantages and disadvantages, but I would invite you to consider prototype theory as an improvement upon the older componential analysis approach, which was based on binary semantic features; it's more inflexible and rigid.
Okay, that's all for this video. I hope that you found this useful. In the meantime, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time. Take care.