lexical semantics - word and set phrase meaning

lexeme - a word entry in a dictionary

listeme - words, set phrases, names, sayings, proverbs - anything that has an unpredictable meaning)

PRAGMATICS- the study of the meaning of whole utterances

Discourse analysis - meaning in a connected text

Three types of discourse Functions

1. denotative (objective or referential) - real life meaning, existing separate from any particular speech act or the attitudes of the speaker: 

    Napoleon died on St. Helena in 1821. 

2. CONNOTATIVE (affective or stylistic) meaning - emotion or attitude particular to the speaker:

    The old codger kicked the bucket. (speaker's flippant attitude)

3) Deictic meaning:  elements of grammar that "glue" the message to a particular speech act: They were here yesterday.

   adverbs of place or time - here/there, yesterday/today/tomorrow

   grammatical tense - past, present, future

   1st, 2nd person personal pronouns - I, you  

   anaphoric pronouns - he, she, it - refer back to something already stated (called the antecedent)

information structure (functional sentence perspective)

what information is new and old to the listener

presupposition - a piece of implied background knowledge: Fido got lost again.

   topic (old information), comment (new information

A. English is neutral:  only marks topic/comment when adding special focus.

1. Focus marked using cleft sentence patterns:

Topic: What got lost was my cat. 

Comment: It was my cat that got lost.  

2. Focus marked by special intonation:

My CAT got lost. (not my dog)

My cat GOT LOST. (That's what happened to the poor thing.)

B. Information structure in other languages

1. Word order.  In Russian, new information comes first, old last:

Got lost my cat (=  My CAT got lost, not my dog.)

My cat got lost (=  My cat GOT LOST. That's what happened to the poor thing).

2. Special topicalizing particles: 

    Japanese adds "wa" after a topic noun phrase.

My cat wa GOT LOST. (That's what happened to the poor thing.)

My CAT got lost. (not my dog)

Truth value of utterances

vague - unclear choice between many meanings

ambiguous - unclear choice between two meanings

pun (play on words) - a double meaning intended to be funny

redundant - part of statement unnecessarily repeats another part          examples:  baby puppy, female tigress, unmarried bachelor

contradiction - two parts of statement can't both be true

    examples:  married bachelor, male tigress, adult puppy

irony - the deliberate use of contradiction to convey meaning

oxymoron - a phrase that is literally contradictory dry ice, unemployed worker,

retronym - a set phrase that originally was redundant:   silent movie, acoustic guitar

analytically true - statement that simply represents a definition of the meaning of the words in it:

            People are human.   Kittens are baby cats.

analytically false - contradict the definition of the words in the statement:  Puppies are baby cats.

empirically true - truth of statement can only be determined from real life, not dictionary meaning:

   Vinegar and baking soda explode into foam.

   President Garfield was assassinated in 1881.

empirically false - falsity of statement can only be determined from real life, not dictionary meaning:

   Champagne removes grass stains from blue jeans.

   Abraham Lincoln was the first US president to die in office.

nonsense statement -obviously and ridiculously empirically false:

   I ate a dinosaur for lunch.      My horse has three wings.

no-sense statement - cannot be given any obvious truth value:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.