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Semantic is
the study of meaning. This study of meaning is ancient. The name semantics was
only coined in the late 19th century by the French linguist Michel
Bréal. Like many other names of branches of linguistics, the word semantics reflects
the origins of the Western tradition of linguistic analysis in the writings of
Greek thinkers from the 5th century BC onwards. Semantics comes
from the ancient Greek word semantikos, an adjective meaning ‘relating
to sign’, based on the noun sēmeion‘sign’. In Ancient Greek, one of the
original uses of sēmeionwas as a medical term for the symptoms that were
the signs of underlying diseases.
The study of sign in general is
known as semantics or semiology it is Greek words from semeion.
In 20th century, the general study of sign became particulary
important. From the meaning we can express through language are infinitely more
numerous, detailed and precise that those expressible through other semiotic
media.the type of meaning found in language can be seen asa subset of two broader
categories of meaningfulness: the significance of human behaviour in general,
and the meaningfulness of communication specifically. Many types of intentional
human behaviour can be seen as having a significance, or a meaning, in the
(broad) sense of the word, since they both express, and allow observers to draw
conclusions about, the nature and intentions of the participants. The use of
fully articulated language, which does involve a communicative intention, is
thus only the fullest and most explicit way in which we derive information
about our environment: as a result, the meaningfulness of language can be seen
as a subset of the meaningfulness of human behaviour. Some information being
made known without the help of language is like the person choking has just
cried out, perhaps involuntarily, and this is enough to attract the attention
of others,
to tell them something
about the current state of that person, and to stimulate them to bring the
required help.Situations are inherently meaningful. Meaning, we might say, is already
there in the world: all we have to do is draw attention to it, and language is
the most specific and unambiguous way of doing so.
Meaning in English and other Language
1. Meaning in English
English uses the verb to mean to refer to a relationship involving
at leastone of three different types of thing: language, the world (including
people objects, and everything outside of ourselves) and our own minds or
intentions.
Ordinary English,makes three different ways oftalking about
language: meaning, use and truth. Each of these three categoriesof ordinary
language description highlights a particular aspect ofthe occurrence. truth
places the emphasis on theobjective facts of the situation by concentrating on
the relation betweenlanguage and reality. use makes no explicit
reference tothe facts, but limits itself to a consideration of equivalences
between thepiece of language in question and an assumed norm. meaning places
the emphasis on the speaker’sintentions.
2.
Meaning in walpiri
In english, the one verb ‘mean’ use to
describe reference, linguistic meaning, intention and general significance. Given the frequency wit, which in
English, we use this verb to talk about the relations between language,
intention and the world, it may be surprising to discover that there are
languages which do not make use of any similar notion in order to talk about
situations. Such language in walpiri a pama-nyungan language spoken in central
australia.
Given the frequency with which, in English, we use this verb to talk about
the relations between language, intention and the world, it may be surprising
to discover that there are languages which do not make use of any similar
notion in order to talk aboutsituations.The result of this is that Warlpiri
makes less of a distinction than English between what a word means, and
what its referent actuallyis. To say what a word means is simply to
describe the object or situation it refers to.
3.
Meaning in french
As we know in walpiri the meanings of the word are not discussed in the
same terms as the intention of speakers, butin French there is a close link
between these two domains. The most common way of expressing mean. in French is
the expression ‘vouloir dire’, which literally means to want to say. To ask
what do you mean? in French is to ask ‘what do you want to say? Talking about
meaning in French then, inherently involves talking about volition wanting.
4.
Meaning in chinese
In other sense the meaning in Mandarin Chinese, there is no single word
with the same range of mean-ings as English mean or meaning. The verb zhi,
whose core meaning is ‘point’ can express all of the relations between mind
language and world discussed in the previous sections, except the world–world
relation.
We can see the translations of mean/meaninginMandarin have a similar range
of senses to their English equivalents,except that Mandarin has no equivalent
to money means power or cloudsmean rain. However, the fact that the verb
meaning ‘point’ is the basic wayof expressing the verbal notion brings in a
connection between meaningand gesture which is not familiar from English
The semiotic triangle: language, mind, world and meaning
Other languages,by contrast,like Warlpiri,seem to bypass this connection by
talking about the meaning of language in the same terms used to talk about the
identity of things in the world. All of these relations are important. To
describe meaning fully, we seem to have to make reference to three principal
terms: language, the world, and the human mind.
According to ogden and richard about semiotict there are three and At the
top of the triangle is what Ogden and Richards called ‘thought’.This reflects
the fact that language comes from human beings, and is therefore ultimately a
product of processes in the mind or brain. But ‘thought’ can be a misleading
label for these processes. The second reason that ‘thought’ is an unfortunate
label for the mentalprocesses at the origin of speech is that it excludes the
non-rational, emotionalside of our inner life.The processes leading to
Speechshould not belimitedtowhat wewouldclass simplyas ‘thinking’,but
extendtoincludeouremotions and volitionas well.First, these mental processes
need not be conscious. Even though we sometimes do consciously think about what
we are going to say, our speech is more
often spontaneous, emerging without our being aware of any preliminary stage of mental preparation.
The second point of the triangle is the ‘symbol, is the most straightf orward. The symbol, in
this terminology, is whatever perceptible token is chosen to express
thespeaker’s intended meaning. In the case of spoken language, the symbols will
be strings of speech sounds, in the case of written language, they will be
marks on the page, and in the case of sign languages, they will be particular
handsigns.
The last point of the triangle is the ‘referent’, or whatever things,
events or situations in the world the language is about. Thus, the sentence the
dogs bark, the caravan goes by has as its referent a particular situation: a
situation in which certain dogs bark and a certain caravan goes by. Within that
sentence, the expressions the dogs and the caravan also have referents: the actual
dogs and caravan being spoken about.
S some
initial concept
To
linguists and non-linguists alike, the word is the most basic and obvious unit
of language. But in many languages, units which we would want to recognize as a
single word can appear in many different morphological forms.
1.
Lexemes
The
lexeme is the name of the abstract unit which unites all the morphological
variants of a single word. Thus, we can say that go, goes, went, have gone and
to go all are instantiations of the lexeme to go.
2.
Sense/reference/denotation/connotation
a.
sense
The
sense of a lexeme may be defined as the general meaning or the concept
underlying the word. The notion of sense can be made more explicit through
contrast with the category of referent
b. Reference
A
word’s referent is the object which it stands for on a specifi c occasion of
use. A word’s referent, then, is the particular thing, person, place, etc.
which an expression stands for on a particular occasion of use, and it changes
each time the word is applied to a different object or situation in the world.
c. Denotation
An expression’s denotation is the class of
possible objects, situations, etc. to which the word can refer. The term
reference, by contrast, has two uses: • as the name of the act by which a
speaker refers to a referent; • as a synonym of referent, i.e. as the term for
the object(s) to which an expression refers on a particular instance of use.
d. Connotation
Sense,
reference and denotation are three aspects of what is commonly conveyed by the
loose term ‘meaning’. A fourth, very important aspect of meaning is
connotation. Connotation names those aspects of meaning which do not affect a
word’s sense, reference or denotation, but which have to do with secondary
factors such as its emotional force, its level of formality, its character as a
euphemism, etc.
3. Compositionality
One especially important category of
non-compositional phrase is idioms. For example, if I say that so-and-so has
thrown in the towel, most English speakers will recognize that I am not talking
about anyone literally ‘throwing’ a ‘towel’, but that I simply mean that the
person in question has given up on whatever venture is being spoken about. The
phrase throw in the towel, then, is not compositional, since its overall meaning,
‘to give up’, does not derive from the meanings of its individual component
lexemes.
Lexical
semantics is the study of word meaning, whereas phrasal semantics is the study
of the principles which govern the construction of the meaning of phrases and
of sentence meaning out of compositional combinations of individual lexemes.
4. Level of meaning
The
utterance meaning, by contrast, is the meaning which the words have on a
particular occasion of use in the particular context in which they occur.
(Utterance meaning is sometimes referred to in other books as speaker meaning.
But since the role of the hearer is just as important as that of the speaker,
the more neutral term utterance meaning is preferred here.
Semantics
is taken to study sentence meaning, whereas pragmatics studies utterance
meaning and other principles of language use. The job of semantics is to study
the basic, literal meanings of words as considered principally as parts of a
language system, whereas pragmatics concentrates on the ways in which these
basic meanings are used in practice, including such topics as the ways in which
different expressions are assigned referents in different contexts, and the
differing (ironic, metaphorical, etc.) uses to which language is put. As we
have already seen, a division between semantics and pragmatics is by no means
universally accepted in linguistics.
5.
Levels Of Meaning
The distinction between sentence meaning and
utterance meaning is also linked to the difference between semantics and pragmatics. Forthose linguists who accept such a division,
semantics is taken to studysentence meaning, whereas pragmatics studies
utterance meaning andother principles of language use. The job of semantics is
to study the basic, literal meanings of words as considered principally as
parts of alanguage system, whereas pragmatics concentrates on the ways in
whichthese basic meanings are used in practice, including such topics as
theways in which different expressions are assigned referents in
differentcontexts, and the differing (ironic, metaphorical, etc.) uses to which
languageis put. As we have already seen, a division between semantics
andpragmatics is by no means universally accepted in linguistics.To be able to
understand the meaning of an utterance, many factors must be considered, such
as social factors, psychological factors, and cultural factors. In semantic
studies, these factors are reflected in the level of meaning, namely lexical
and idiomatical meaning, grammatical meaning, and contextual meaning.
Object language and metalanguage
Like other branches of linguistics, semantics deals with words, phrases and sentences used to communicate.But for that semantics the object of direct research is not the words, phrases and sentences themselves, in the sense of sound, sequences of letters or handwritten spoken or done and then can write or record. As a study of meaning, semantics are attracted to something that is unacceptabledirectly through our senses, but in one way or another. We cannot see, hear or erase the meaning of words: meanings are things we understand.
To find out, we need to understand the meaning and bring them to light in a clear way so that we can begin to study it.
The
main way in which we normally reveal the meanings of linguistic expressions is,
quite simply, by describing them in language. Butsince it is language that we’re
interested in in the first place, we needto distinguish between the languagewhose
meanings we want todescribe and the language in which we couch the descriptions. The language whose meanings we
are describing is called the object
language.The language in which we describe these meanings is called themetalanguage.
If
linguistics is to play a part in explaining the way language can be actually
used by realspeakers, we need to fi nd a point at which the circle can be
broken in orderto link meaning in with something non-linguistic.
Breaking
the circle
As pointed out by Quine (1961: 47), until the
development of ‘a satisfactory explanation of the notion of meaning, linguists
in semantic fi elds are inthe situation of not knowing what they are talking
about’. This is perhapsnot such a dire situation as it sounds: after all,
empirical investigationalways aims to increase our knowledge of some unknown
phenomenon,provisionally characterized using ordinary language. As the inquiry
proceeds,
we get a sharper idea of the nature of the thing
being studied, andit may not matter that in early stages we have to rely on
notions for whichwe cannot yet give any satisfactory explanation. Many fi elds
of empiricalinquiry begin with only hazy and imprecise conceptions of the real
objectof their investigation.
1. Meanings as
referents/denotations
One way to break the definitional
circle would be to stress the role of the referent or denotation as the main
component of the meaning of a linguistic expression. Under this theory,
metalanguage explanations of a meaning should be seen as names of the referents
of the object language term.
The fact that linguistic expressions can be identical in reference
but different in meaning leaves us no choice but to conclude that there is more
to meaning than reference/denotation.
2.
Meanings as concepts/mental representations
The
referential/denotationaltheory of meaning broke the definitional circle by
emphasizing the referent side of the sense/referent pair. Another way out of
the circle is to identify meanings with concepts: the metalanguagedefinitions of
an object language meaning, in this theory, are the names of the concepts
associated with the object language term. The use of the term ‘concept’ in
linguistics derives from philosophy, where it has a very long history of
discussion and controversy. For our purposes, concepts can be seen as a way of
talking about the basic constituents of thought.
concepts
are the individual words and expressions of which this conversation consists.
Concepts are implicated in practically every aspect of our mental lives.
Concepts are also needed to explain how we recognize objects in the world as
themselves.
3.
Meanings as brain states
A
natural thought about meaning is to identify it with brain states:
understanding or intending a certain meaning, on this identification, would just
be having the neurons of one’s brain in a particular configuration. From one
point of view, this identification seems very plausible.
brain
states must ultimately cause all behaviour, including language. But it is going
too fast to conclude from this that we will eventually be able to identify
meanings with brain states and reduce semantics to brain science. The fi rst
obstacle is that it’s hard to see how brain states could have the properties
that meanings have. Meanings, the way we normally think of them, have mutual
connections to each other – of synonymy, antonymy, class inclusion and so on.
Studying
brain states will only tell us how language is implemented. It will tell us
nothing about the higher-level relations that tie this implementation in with
the rest of our psychology. As a result, meanings are unavoidable as part of
the explanation of utterances.
4.
Meaning and use
An
alternative to the three previous theories is the view that a word’s meaning
consists simply in the way it is used. This is the use theory of meaning, and
it has been advanced, in different forms, by behaviourist psychologists such as
Skinner (1957), and linguists such as Bloomfield (1933
Meaning and explanation
meaning
can be used to facilitate many tasks on the level of practical language use
(explanation of new words, translation from one language to another,
prescriptive regulation of disputes over usage, etc.)
all these cases
attention to the explanatory purpose of talk about meaning will direct us
towards whichever conception of meaning seems to provide the best explanation
of the particular semantic phenomenon at hand.
CONCLUSION
Semantics is the study of meaning and we can not just know about the
meaning, we must know what is meaning in other languages. The meaningfulness of
language can be seen as just one instance of the meaningfulness of human
behaviour and communication in general, and is one of the system of structured
meaningfulness studied in semiotics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Riemer
Nick,2010. Introducing Semantics, New York, Cambridge University Press
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