Semantics1 Week 2

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Additional material for the meeting of week 2, April 22, 2015.

Our literary scenario: Game of Thrones (TV series)

Our scenario and some preliminary thoughts

Getting into our literary scenario

Watch the trailer of Season 1 of Game of Thrones:

<mediaplayer>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YinJaXzgzqI</mediaplayer>


Having watched the video, which of the following statements are true in our scenario?

Click on those statements that are true in our scenario.

John Snow is Ned Stark's son.
Catelyn wants that her husband becomes the king's Hand.
Catelyn wants her husband to become the Hand of the king.
There is a king.
There is no king.


The meanings of some of these sentences are closely related. What do you observe for the following sentence pairs?

Catelyn wants that her husband becomes the king's Hand. and Catelyn wants her husband to become the Hand of the king.

Check your answers

The two sentences are paraphrases of each other, i.e., in every situation, whever the first is true, so is the second.

There is a king. and There is no king.

Check your answers

The two sentences contradict each other. Whenever one is true, the other must be false.


Catelyn wants that her husband becomes the king's Hand. and There is a king.

Check your answers

Whoever utters the first sentence must also assume the truth of the second. (Technically, the second sentence is presupposed by the first, but this doesn't matter here.)

Task:

  1. Formulate three more statements with respect to our scenario.
  2. Determine for each of them whether it is true or false in our scenario.
  3. Is there a systematic relation between the meaning of your sentences?

Why it is too difficult to go directly from language to the world

The following architecture is extremely useful when talking about semantics:

  1. A natural language expressions: Rob likes John.
  2. ... is mapped to some expression from a formal language (here: predicate logic): like(rob,john)
  3. This logical expression is then interpreted with respect to our scenario/world: The formula like(rob,john) is true, because, in our scenario, Rob likes John.


The following properties of natural language make it useful to use the intermediate step of a logical language:

  1. The same expression can have different meanings (ambiguity).
  2. Different expressions can have the same meaning (synonyms, paraphrases)

Find examples for the above-mentioned properties (ambiguity, synonymy, paraphrases).


Check your answers

1. one form, two meaingns: Ambiguity: (see earlier in this meeting and the slides of last week's meeting)

1.a Ambiguous words: date (fruit or point in time); bank (financial institute or bank of a river)

1.b. Ambiguous sentences: Ned

2. two forms, one meaning:

2.a Synonymous words: couch - sofa; instant - moment

2.b Paraphrases:

  • active-passive pairs: Robert invited Ned to King's Landing. - Ned got invited to King's Landing by Robert.
  • cleft sentences: Robert invited Ned to King's Landing. - It was to King's Landing that Robert invited Ned.
  • our previous example: Catelyn wants that her husband becomes the king's Hand. and Catelyn wants her husband to become the Hand of the king.

What we need in a formal model

<mediaplayer>http://youtu.be/4a3mXelw7H4</mediaplayer>


For next week

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