LING 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Justin Trudeau, Translation Studies, Componential Analysis
14 May 2018
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The nature of meaning
- determining the difference and similarity of meaning in words and phrases
or sentences is relatively easy, but defining what meaning is or how meaning
is represented in the human mind can be more difficult
- Denotation and connotation
o Denotation is a well known concept that associates the meaning of a
word or phrase with the entities it refers of its referents
o Ex. denotation of heart is the organ that pumps blood
o Referent may not always exist in real world
o Connotation → set of associations that a word can evoke
▪ Heart may evoke love, romantic love, etc
- Extension (reference) and intension (sense)
o Extension: makes reference to the referents (things in world), the
intention by contrast makes reference to the inherent sense, the
concepts it evokes
o Ex. prime minister of Canada → making reference to Justin Trudeau
extension but the intention is the concept of leader of the governing
party
o With intention we can use mental images and can certainly imagine a
unicorn for ex., even though we may have never seen one in person →
connotation/denotation difficulty
o Referent: the object pointed to in such a noun phrase
o Reference: noun phrase is said to have a reference
o Coreferential: more to meaning than just reference → the red brick
and the first brick from the right
- Componential analysis
o Break it down into semantic components, or semantic properties or
features
o Very useful in studying the meaning of verbs ex. verbs like go, come,
brinf, take not only indicate movement of something, but also
movement away (go, take) and towards (come, bring)
o Crucial in translation studies when trying to find the closest
equivalent of words in other languages
o More features the words share, the better the equivalence between
terms to be used in the target language
Thematic roles
- The boy in the boy found the red brick is called an agent or doer
- the NP a red brick is the theme and undergoes the action
- the noun phrases within a verb phrase whose head is put have the relation
of theme and goal
- thematic roles of a verb: theme, agent and goal
- location: where action occurs.
- Source: where the action originates
- instrument: an object used to accomplish the action
- experiencer: one receiving sensory input
- causative: a natural force that causes a change
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Document Summary
Determining the difference and similarity of meaning in words and phrases or sentences is relatively easy, but defining what meaning is or how meaning is represented in the human mind can be more difficult. Experiencer: one receiving sensory input causative: a natural force that causes a change instrument: an object used to accomplish the action. Grammatical case: morphological shape thematic roles shape. Theta-assignment: process of assigning thematic roles, grammatical activity of spreading info from verb to noun phrase and propositional phrase satellites. Theta-criteria: states that a particular thematic role may occur only once in a sentence. When meaning becomes obscured violation of sematic rules sense (semantically anomalous) When we speak metaphors we break a semantic rule to convey an idea by stretching the imagination of speakers, non literal meaning. I ran out of ink means ink is finished/ink is no more. There is no in the target language (cid:498)running(cid:499) outside of a puddle of ink.
