Some comparisons with formal approaches to semantics
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C5-P171
2025-12-17
42
Some comparisons with formal approaches to semantics
In this section, we sketch out some of the differences between cognitive semantics and formal approaches to meaning. These different points are developed at relevant points throughout Part II of the book, and in Chapter 13 cognitive semantics is compared with two influential formal theories of meaning: Formal Semantics and Relevance Theory. To begin with, formal approaches to meaning such as truth-conditional semantics, which aim to be broadly compatible with the generative model, assume a dictionary model of linguistic meaning, rather than an encyclopaedic model. According to this view, linguistic meaning is separate from ‘world knowledge’, and can be modelled according to precise and formally stated definitions. Often, formal models of meaning rely on semantic decomposition along the lines we outlined in Chapter 3. One consequence of the strict separation of linguistic knowledge from world knowledge is the separation of semantics from pragmatics. While semantic meaning relates to the meaning ‘packaged’ inside words, regardless of their context of use, pragmatic meaning relates to how speakers make use of contextual information to retrieve speaker meaning by constructing inferences and so on. Of course, both semantic and pragmatic meaning interact to give rise to the interpretation of an utterance, but the formal model holds that only semantic meaning, being ‘purely linguistic’, belongs in the lexicon. As we will discover, cognitive semantics rejects this sharp division between semantics and pragmatics. Furthermore, in assuming a proto type model of word meaning, cognitive semantics also rejects the idea that word meaning can be modelled by strict definitions based on semantic decomposition.
A related issue concerns the assumption of compositionality that is assumed within formal models Not only is word meaning composed from semantic primitives, but sentence meaning is composed from word meaning, together with the structure imposed on those words by the grammar. While this view might work well enough for some sentences, it fails to account for ‘non-compositional’ expressions: those expressions whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the parts. These include idioms and metaphors (recall our discussion of the idiomatic expression kick the bucket in Chapter 1). This view implies that non-compositional expressions are the exception rather than the norm. As we will see, cognitive linguists also reject this view, adopting a constructional rather than compositional view of sentence meaning. Furthermore, cognitive semanticists argue that figurative language is in fact central to our way of thinking as well as to the way language works.
The final difference that we mention here relates to the model of truth conditional semantics that is adopted by most formal models of linguistic meaning. This approach assumes an objectivist position, which means that it assumes an objective external reality against which descriptions in language can be judged true or false. In this way, it builds a model of semantic meaning that can be made explicit by means of a logical metalanguage. For example, the sentences Lily devoured the cake and The cake was devoured by Lily stand in a sentence meaning relation of paraphrase. The truth-conditional model characterises this meaning relation by describing the two sentences, or rather the propositions they express, as both holding true of the same state of affairs in the world. The appeal of this model is that it allows for precise statements that can be modelled by logic (a point to which we return in Chapter 13). One of the main disadvantages is that it can only account for propositions (roughly, descriptions of states of affairs). Of course, many utterances do not express propositions, such as questions, commands, greetings and so on, so that the truth-conditional model can only account for the meaning of a subset of sentence or utterance types. This view stands in direct opposition to the experientialist view adopted within cognitive semantics, which describes meaning in terms of human construal of reality.
Of course, there are many different formal models of linguistic meaning, and we cannot do justice to them all here. For purposes of comparison in this book, we refer to the ‘standard’ truth-conditional approach that is set out in most textbooks of semantics, while drawing the reader’s attention to the fact that more recent formal approaches, notably the Conceptual Semantics model developed by Ray Jackendoff (1983, 1990, 1992, 1997), are consonant with the cognitive view in a number of important ways. For example, like cognitive semanticists, Jackendoff assumes a non-objective representational rather than denotational view of meaning: a mentalist model, which treats meaning as a relationship between language and world that is mediated by the human mind. Jackendoff also rejects the truth-conditional approach. However, as we saw in Chapter 3, Jackendoff adopts the semantic decomposition approach, and aims to build a model that is compatible with generative assumptions, including the nativist hypothesis and the modularity hypothesis.
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