Series editors Keith Brown, Eve V. Clark, Jim Miller, Lesley Milroy, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Peter Roach Meaning in Language An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics Meaning in Language An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics D. Alan Cruse University of Manchester OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS This page intentionally left blank OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 2000 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (Data applied for) ISBN 0198700105 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain on acidfree paper by Bath Press Ltd., Bath, Avon To Paute, Pierre, and Lisette This page intentionally left blank Contents Typographic conventions ix Preface x Parti Fundamental Notions 1 1 Introduction 3 2 Logical matters 17 3 Types and dimensions of meaning 41 4 Compositionality 65 Part 2 Words and their Meanings 83 5 Introduction to lexical semantics 85 6 Contextual variability of word meaning 103 7 Word meanings and concepts 125 8 Paradigmatic sense relations of inclusion and identity 143 9 Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition 163 10 Word fields 177 11 Extensions of meaning 197 12 Syntagmatic relations 217 13 Lexical decomposition 237 Part 3 Semantics and Grammar 263 14 Grammatical semantics 265 viii Contents Part 4: Pragmatics 301 15 Reference and deixis 303 16 Speech acts 329 17 Implicatures 347 Conclusion 379 Answers to questions 383 References 401 Index 409 Typographic conventions Small capitals For concepts; occasionally for lexical roots. Small capitals in square brackets For semantic components.
Angled brackets For selectional restrictions Bold type For technical terms when first introduced. Italics For citation forms when not set on a different line. Bold italics For emphasis. Single quotation marks For quotations from other authors; 'scare quotes'.
Double quotation marks For meanings. Question marks For semantic oddness. Asterisks For ungrammaticality or extreme semantic abnormality. Preface The aim of this book is not to present a unified theory of meaning in language (I am not even sure that that would be a worthwhile project), but to survey the full range of semantic phenomena, in all their richness and variety, in such a way that the reader will feel, on completing the book, that he or she has made facetoface contact with the undeniably messy 'real world' of meaning.
At the same time, it aims to show that even the messy bits can, at least to some extent, be tamed by the application of disciplined thinking. As far as seman tic theories are concerned, I have been unashamedly eclectic, adopting what ever approach to a particular problem seems genuinely to shed light on it. If there is a theoretical bias, it is in favour of approaches which, like the cognitive linguistic approach, embrace the continuity and nonfiniteness of meaning. This is not intended to be a 'baptismal' text; it would probably not be suit able for absolute beginners.
The sort of readership I had in mind is second or thirdyear undergraduates and beginning postgraduates who have completed at least an introductory course in linguistics, and who require an overview of meaning in language, either as preparation for a more detailed study of some particular area, or as background for other studies. I would hope it would be found useful, not only by students of linguistics, but also students of ancient and modern languages, translation, psychology, perhaps even literature. Most of the material in the book has grown out of courses in general seman tics, lexical semantics, and pragmatics, given to second and thirdyear under graduates and postgraduates at Manchester University over a number of years. I owe a debt to generations of students in more than one way: their undisguised puzzlement at some of my explanations of certain topics led to greater clarity and better exemplification; critical questions and comments not infrequently exposed weaknesses in the underlying arguments; and very occasionally, a genuine flash of insight emerged during a classroom discussion.
The final form of the text was significantly influenced by constructive com ments on a draft by Jim Miller of the University of Edinburgh, an anonymous American reviewer, and John Davey of Oxford University Press, although, of course, full responsibility for remaining imperfections lies with myself. Preface xi The organization of the book is as follows. It is in four parts. Part I dis cusses a range of basic notions that underlie virtually all discussions of mean ing within linguistics; Part 2 concentrates on aspects of the meanings of words; Part 3 deals with semantic aspects of grammar; Part 4 introduces the core areas of pragmatics, and highlights the relations between meaning and context.
Within Part I, Chapter I provides a very general introduction to questions of meaning, locating the linguistic study of meaning within the wider context of the study of signs and communication in general. Chapter 2 introduces a set of fundamental conceptual tools, mostly drawn from the field of logic, which, because of their wide currency in discussions of semantic matters, constitute indispensable background knowledge for a study of meaning in language. In Chapter 3, a number of concepts are introduced for the descrip tion of meanings and differences of meaning. A basic dichotomy (based on Lyons 1977) is introduced between descriptive and nondescriptive meaning and, under each of these headings, important types and dimensions of vari ation are described.
It is rare to encounter any extended treatment of these topics in semantics textbooks, yet a mastery of them is essential to anyone who wishes to talk in a disciplined way about meanings. Chapter 4 discusses the way(s) in which simpler meanings are combined to form more complex meanings. In Part 2, Chapter 5 provides a general introduction to the study of word meanings, first discussing whether there are any restrictions on what sort of meanings words can bear, then distinguishing the meaning of a word from that of a sentence or discourse, and the meanings of full lexical items from the meanings of grammatical elements. In this chapter the major approaches to lexical semantics are also outlined.
In Chapter 6, the focus is on the range of variation observable in a single word form in different contexts, ranging from arbitrarily juxtaposed homonymies to subtle modulations of sense. Chapter 7 introduces a conceptual approach to lexical semantics, beginning with a dis cussion of whether and to what extent word meanings can be equated with concepts. The discussion continues with an outline of prototype theory, the currently dominant approach to natural conceptual categories, and its rele vance for the study of word meanings. Chapters 8 and 9 deal with relations of sense between lexical items which can occupy the same syntactic position—in other words, paradigmatic sense relations, such as hyponymy, meronymy, incompatibility, synonymy, antonymy, complementarity, reversivity, and con verseness.
Chapter 10 looks at larger groupings of words—word fields— mainly structured by the sense relations examined in the previous two chap ters. Chapter 11 describes the main types of process, such as metaphor and metonymy, which enable new meanings to be produced from old ones. In Chapter 12, meaning relations between words in the same syntactic construc tion, that is, syntagmatic sense relations, are examined. Topics discussed include the nature of normal and abnormal collocations, reasons for a xii Preface tendency for certain types of words to cooccur, and the nature and con sequences of selectional pressures of words on their partners in a string.
Chapter 13 outlines the componential approach to the description of word meaning, which specifies meaning in terms of semantic primitives. The focus in Chapter 14, which constitutes the whole of Part 3, is on the sorts of meanings associated with various grammatical entities. First there is a discussion of the problem of whether there are any constant meanings attached to categories such as noun, verb, and adjective, and functions such as subject and object. There then follows a survey of the sorts of meaning borne by grammatical elements of various sorts, such as number and gender in the noun phrase, tense, aspect, and modality in connection with the verb, degree in the adjective, and so on.
Part 4 covers topics which are usually considered to fall under pragmatics, in that either they involve aspects of meaning which cannot be satisfactorily treated unless context is taken into account, or they are not propositional in nature (or both). Chapter 15 is concerned with reference, that is, establishing connections between utterances and the extralinguistic world. Reference is portrayed as the assigning of values to variables, the variables being signalled by definite expressions and the values being items in the extralinguistic world. Various strategies for indicating (on the part of the speaker) and determining (on the part of the hearer) correct referents are discussed, including the use and interpretation of deictic elements, names, and descriptions.
Chapter 16 provides an outline of speech act theory, mainly following Austin and Searle (1969). It discusses the acts that people perform when they are speaking—acts such as stating, requesting, warning, congratulating, commanding, and so on. The range of different types of speech act is surveyed and their nature exam ined. Chapter 17 deals with conversational implicatures, that is, those aspects of the intended meaning of an utterance which are not encoded in its linguistic structure, but are, as it were, 'read between the lines'.
Different types of con versational implicature are described and some proposed explanations of how they arise are considered. The concluding chapter briefly surveys the areas covered in the book, sug gests practical applications of the study of meaning, and highlights areas which are currently poorly understood, and where further research is needed. Each chapter except Chapter I and Chapter 5 contains a set of discussion questions and/or exercises, suggested answers to which will be found at the end of the book. Part 1 Fundamental Notions In this first part of the book, a number of fundamental, but fairly general notions are introduced, which need to be grasped before the more detailed discussions in later sections can be properly appreciated.
Chapter 1 has a scene-setting function, identi- fying the place of linguistic signs and linguistic communication in the broader domains of semiotics and communication in general. Chapter 2 introduces a num- ber of vital conceptual tools drawn from the field of logic. Chapter 3 surveys the range of different sorts of meaning, and dimensions of variation in meaning. Chapter 4 discusses the notion of compositionality, one of the essential properties of lan- guage, and its limits.
This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1.5 Approaches to the study of meaning 10 1.2 Semiotics: some basic notions 7 1.6 The linguistic study of meaning 12 1.3 Language and other communicative 1.