Download SEMANTICS

SEMANTICS
DEFINITION: Semantics is the study of MEANING in
LANGUAGE
Try to get yourself into the habit of careful thinking about
your language and the way you use it, concentrating on
instances of words such as mean, means, and meaning.
Practice
Pick out all the instances of the word mean (or means, or meant), noting which
lines they occur in. After the passage there are some questions for you to answer.
1“. . . That shows that there three hundred and sixty-four days when you might
2 get un-birthday presents.”
3
“Certainly,” said Alice.
4
“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”
5
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
6 Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course, you don’t – till I tell
7 you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knockdown argument for you.’”
8
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown argument ’,” Alice objected.
9
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it
10 means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
11
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so
12 many different things.”
13
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Questions
(1) What word is the subject of the verb mean in line 5?
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(2) What is the subject of the verb mean in line 8?
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(3) What is understood as the subject of the verb mean in line 9?
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(4) List all of the instances (by line number) where mean, means, or meant has
a personal subject, e.g. I or you. (Include instances already listed in the
questions above)
_______________________________________________________________
(5) List all of the instances (by line number) in which mean, means, or meant is
understood as having as subject something linguistic, e.g. A word or words.
(Include instances mentioned in the questions above).
_________________________________________________________________
We have to recognize the distinction clearly between what the speaker means and
what words (sentences) mean. The following definitions encapsulate this essential
distinction.
Definition
SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey)
when he uses a piece of language.
SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or
word) means, i.e. What it counts as the equivalent of in the language
concerned.
Many sentences do carry information in a straightforward way, but many sentences
are used by speakers not to give information at all, but to keep the social wheels
turning smoothly. The giving of information itself is an act of courtesy, performed to
strenghten social relationships. The social relationships formed and maintained by
the use of language are not all courteous and amicable. Speaker meaning can
include both courtesy and hostility, praise and insult, endearment and taunt.
Sentence meaning and speaker meaning are both important, burt systematic
study proceeds more easily if one distinguishes the two, and, for the most part
gives prior consideration to sentence meaning and those aspects of meaning
generally which are determined by the language system, rather than those which
reflect the will of individual speakers and the circumstances of use on particular
occasions.
Competent speakers of a language know the meanings of sentences and words of
the language concerned. Native speakers of languages are the primary source of
informaton about meaning. The student (or the professor) of semantics may well
be good at describing meanings, oe theorizing about meaning in general, but he
nas no advantage over any normal speaker of a language in the matter of access to
the basic data concerning meaning.
If semantics is the study of meaning, and speakers already know the meanings of
all the expressions in their language, what, then, the readers of semantics learn
from it? The answer is that semantics is an attempt to set up a theory of meaning.
Defintion
A THEORY is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical
framework of inter- dependent statements and definitions,
constructed so that as large a number as possible of a particular
basic facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in
terms of it.
In aiming to discover some system and pattern in an assortment of particular facts
about the meanings of individual words, sentences, and utterances, it is obviously
necessary to try to move from particular facts to generalizations, i.e. statements
about whole classes of items. That is, we do not talk about the meanings of
individual words, such as John, man, under, and, the, and so on, but we talk about
proper names, common nouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc.
There are a number of technical terminologies deveeloped by semanticists to
enable them to talk precisely and simply about meaning. After you learn some of
these technical terms, you should find that you get better at making precise
statements about various aspects of meaning.
However, no theory, of whatever field or subject, is complete; neither is semantic
theory. That is, no matter how many facts a theory actually succeeds in explaining
or predicting, there are always further factsin need of explanation, other facts
about which the theory has made any prediction (or possibly about which it makes
a false prediction), and facts which do not seem to be readily describable in the
terms provided by the teory. Human knowledge grows cumulatively, with
occasional drastic leaps and revolutions.
Aristotle can be regarded as a forerunner of modern semantics. He was obviously
concerned with the same general areas that concern modern semanticists.
However, there are areas of meaning studied by modern semanticists which were
known to Aristotle. We must assume that our modern theories of meaning are in
some sense suoerior to Aristotle’s, i.e. In some ways Aristotle ‘got it wrong’, and
we, with the benefit of 2,000 years’ further thought, are more likely to have ‘got it
right’.
SENTENCES, UTTERANCES, AND PROPOSITIONS
Definition
An UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after
of which there is silence on the part of that person.
An utterance is the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular
occasion, of a piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or
a single phrase, or even a single word.
Definition (partial)
A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is,
conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL
string of words behind various realizations in utterances and
inscriptions.
Definition (partial)
A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a
complete thought.
Definition
A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a
declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.
The state of affairs typically involves persons ofr things referred to by
expressions in the sentence. In uttering a declarative sentence a
speaker typically asserts a proposition.
A proposition may be true or it may be false. True propositions
correspond to facts; false propositions do not correspond to facts
Utterances
Can be loud
or quiet
Can be
grammatical
or not
Can be true or
false
In a particular
regional
accent
In a particular
language
Sentences
Propositions
Proposition
sentence
utterance
utterance
sentence
utterance utterance
sentence
utterance
utterance