Intro to Semantics Bill Ladusaw University of California, Santa Cruz - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Intro to Semantics

Bill Ladusaw University of California, Santa Cruz

Course Overview

• ladusaw@ucsc.edu
• Canvas resources (Files, Announcements, Assignments?)
• Attendance and weekly “responses” due by Tuesday class
• Office Hours: T-F by arrangement
• Library Reserves: Portner and Kearns
• LSA Statements

Syllabus

• F 7/7: Meaning & Understanding; Context & Content
• T 7/11: Basics of Formal semantics
• F 7/14: Predicates and their arguments
• T 7/18: Reference, generality, descriptions, & opacity
• F 7/21: Quantification
• T 7/25: Tense, aspect, modality, and attitudes
• F 7/28: Given, new, focus, and discourse coherence
• T 8/1: Punchlines, themes, and horizons

Ready to Begin?

Four Guideposts on
 Meaning,
 Inference,
 and Communication

• I. The Front Door
• Unexpected situations trigger hypotheses about what’s

going on (interpretations)

• Hypotheses are sensitive to background and contextual

circumstances.

• The door doesn’t intend for you to understand it.

The Dumb Show

• Unexpected action from another cognitive agent
• Hypothesis is about the goal of the agent
• Decision to accept or object subsequent to interpretation

Buying Limes in Egypt

• Market as situational frame
• Shared background increases effectiveness and

efficiency

• Knowledge of language not needed; 


Knowledge of ??? crucial.

Coffeeshop Sign

• Do not serve dead customers.
• To anyone.

Coffeeshop Sign

• Metaphorically dead
• Creepy subject
• Intricacy of knowledge of language
• Processing in real time

Do not serve dead customers.
 To anybody.

Utterance Understanding ≠ 
 Sentence Meaning

Natural meaning
 Speaker’s meaning Linguistic meaning

Slicing the Onion of Interpretation

• Cognitive agents interpreting their environment
• Interpreting the behavior/actions of other agents


(hypotheses about communicative intent)

• Recognizing background information and context
• Assessing shared background and context


(“Common ground”)

• Knowledge of the language: conventional linguistic

meaning

The (Gricean) Pragmatic Envelope

• After I handed her the book, she gave it back to me.
• Is Jim in his office?
• Yes/No
• The light is on.
• I hear someone talking in there.
• I like you a lot.

Unpacking Context

• Participants
• Location (temporal, spatial)
• Deixis and indexicality


here, there, then, now, this, that, before, ago

• Reference into the described situation (aboutness)

Where is 
 “Semantics”
 ?