The Study of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

By Nathan Klinedinst and Yasutada Sudo

About

The book is an introductory textbook to modern semantics and pragmatics. Teaching material on semantic and pragmatics has traditionally centered around philosophy of language and logic, primarily for reasons that have to do with the history of the discipline, but interdisciplinary perspectives are becoming increasingly important for the study of meaning and of interest for researchers and students alike. In our opinion, education in this area has not caught up quite well with this trend, and existing textbooks tend to focus mostly on philosophical and logical perspectives (see 4. below). While the philosophical and logical traditions are still highly important and relevant for the study of meaning, it is our opinion that a BA-level course should incorporate broader perspectives offered by recent developments in linguistics as well as in related fields, in order to better reflect the dynamics of this area of study. We also believe that such broad perspectives appeal to students at an introductory level. More specifically, among the logical tools, we introduce Set Theory and Propositional Logic, and explain how they could be used in analyzing linguistic meaning. In so doing, we discuss issues such as vagueness, the mass-count distinction, crosslinguistic variation and linguistic relativism, the pragmatics and acquisition of connectives in natural language, and reasoning in natural language, drawing on data from recent crosslinguistic and interdisciplinary research. Covering these issues also allows us to introduce and illustrate general principles of linguistic theorizing and analysis (which are often presupposed in other texts, being left to introductory modules on syntax and phonetics/phonology). This is useful for students from other fields studying semantics, or those studying it concurrently with their first modules in other areas of linguistics, and serves to clarify and emphasize the continuity of semantics with other areas linguistics.

A unique feature of this textbook is that while covering the logical tools and concepts that have been traditionally taught in a course on semantics, namely Set Theory and Propositional Logic and their uses in analyses of natural language, it also offers crosslinguistic and interdisciplinary perspectives, which in our opinion have not been sufficiently incorporated in the education in this area. Incorporating them allows us to better illustrate how semantics is situated in, and continuous with, linguistics and other disciplines. Also unlike most other textbooks on formal semantics and pragmatics, it presupposes no prior familiarity with linguistic theory or analysis.

Table of Contents

Ch. 1: Study of Meaning

This chapter introduces the basic ideas of modern linguistic theory as a theory of linguistic knowledge and explain where the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics) is situated and what its main goals are, together with a brief history of the field. It then discusses basic key ideas in semantics and pragmatics, such as entailment, truth-condition, the distinction between object language and meta-language. [ draft (Autumn 2024) ]

Ch. 2: Extensions and Set Theory

This chapter starts with discussion of word meaning and concepts. It then introduces the idea of extension (in model theoretic terms, without giving too much technical details). It introduces Set Theory and discusses how the extensions of predicates can be accounted for in set-theoretic terms. [ draft (Autumn 2024) ]

Ch. 3: Vagueness

This chapter is a continuation of the previous chapter, and zooms in on the issue of ‘vagueness’, which is one of the long standing issues in the study of meaning. After explaining the issue with concrete examples, it introduces Fuzzy Set Theory and discusses whether it can solve the issue of vagueness. Here it is emphasized how to evaluate theoretical claims by assessing theoretical predictions against empirical data. [ draft (Autumn 2024) ]

Ch. 4: Plurality

This chapter discusses ways to account for plural nouns phrases and ways to analyze numerals in set theoretic terms. It also introduces the issue of unmarked plurals and how it could be solved.

Ch. 5: Mass-Count

This chapter focuses on issues concerning the mass/count distinction. After introducing the basic phenomenon in terms of a grammatical distinction, it discusses three competing theoretical views in turn, including the most naïve view that mass nouns describe substances and count nouns describe concrete objects. It is explain what the problems these theoretical views encounter, drawing on recent crosslinguistic and experimental studies on this topic. [ draft (Autumn 2024) ]

Ch. 6: Classifier Languages

This chapter zooms in on crosslinguistic variation, especially focusing on a class of languages called classifier languages (e.g. Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Yucatec Mayan). It discusses competing theoretical ideas about how the semantics of nouns in classifier languages differs from the semantics of nouns in non- classifier languages like English. The chapter includes a lot of data from recent crosslingusitic word as well as from experimental work.

Chapter 7: Linguistic Relativism

This chapter partly relates to the previous chapter and begins with the idea that languages without a grammatical mass-count distinction have consequences on certain cognitive abilities of speakers of the languages. This is an instance of the general idea called ‘linguistic relativism’. It then moves on to critically discussing similar ideas in other grammatical domains, especially color terms, gender, tense, and locative expressions, and what experimental studies have actually uncovered.

Chapter 8: Connectives in Natural Language

This chapter introduces the second major logical tool introduced in this textbook, Propositional Logic. It emphasizes that Propositional Logic is a logical language but ways in which it is studied are applicable to natural language as well, as demonstrated in the chapters to follow.

Chapter 9: Disjunction in Natural Language

This and the following chapter highlight differences between connectives in English and Propositional Logic, and introduces the idea that part of the meaning we perceive might not be coming from the lexical semantics of the expressions (semantics), but from reasoning about uses of these expressions (pragmatics). This chapter focuses on disjunction. After introducing Gricean Pragmatics, it contrasts a Gricean view of scalar implicature with some alternative semantic ideas. It also introduces observations from recent studies on the acquisition of the semantics and pragmatics of disjunction.

Chapter 10: Conjunction and Conditionals in Natural Language

This chapter discusses how conjunction and conditionals in natural language differ from logical conjunction and material implication in Propositional Logic, and whether pragmatics could be used to account for their differences.

Chapter 11: Reasoning in Logic and Natural Language

This chapter first introduces a semantic proof method for Propositional Logic. It then discusses findings from psychological studies that seem to suggest that human beings sometimes fail to perform logical reasoning. It is critically discussed what conclusions could be drawn from such observations in light of the idea of the semantics-pragmatics division introduced in Chapters 9 and 10.

Chapter 12: Compositionality in Logic and Natural Language

The final chapter is devoted to the issue of compositionality in natural language. After introduces the idea using Propositional Logic, it applies it to a ‘fragment’ of natural language. It then discusses a potential issue posed by idiomatic expressions.