UNIT 1 WHAT IS SEMANTICS? A. DEFINITION Semantics (Greek, semantikos, “significant”), the study of the meaning of linguistic signs—that is, words, expressions, and sentences. Scholars of semantics try to answer such questions as “What is the meaning of (the word) X?” They do this by studying what signs are, as well as how signs possess significance—that is, how they are intended by speakers, how they designate (make reference to things and ideas), and how they are interpreted by hearers. The goal of semantics is to match the meanings of signs—what they stand for—with the process of assigning those meanings. Semantics is studied from philosophical (pure) and linguistic (descriptive and theoretical) approaches, plus an approach known as general semantics. Philosophers look at the behaviour that goes with the process of meaning. Linguists study the elements or features of meaning as they are related in a linguistic system. General semanticists concentrate on meaning as influencing what people think and do. Here are two senses for semantics: 1. Semantics is, generally defined, the study of meaning of linguistic expressions. 2. Semantics is, more narrowly defined, the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions apart from consideration of the effect that pragmatic factors, such as the following, have on the meaning of language in use: • Features of the context • Conventions of language use • The goals of the speaker In the scope of this course we only mention semantics in its narrow sense, namely sentence (word) meaning which is independent of pragmatic context. We do not discuss such aspects of meaning as with the speaker’s meaning which should be interpreted based on the consideration of the extra-linguistic factors namely speaker’s intention, governing factors of pragmatic context and situation such as time, place …. As mentioned, semantics is the study of meaning of linguistic expressions. Here we have to answer the questions: “What is meaning?” and “What is considered linguistic expressions?” Meaning can be interpreted and understood in a variety of ways and perspectives. Just look at some instances of meaning in the following sentences. I. The meaning of meaning In an important rarely book on the subject, C.K Ogden & I.A. Richards’s The Meaning of Meaning (1923) (cited in Crystal (1987), 16 different meanings of the words ‘mean/ meaning’ were distinguished. Here are some of them: 1 John means to write. ‘intends’ A green light means go. ‘indicates’ Health means everything. ‘has importance’ His look was full of meaning. ‘special import’ What is the meaning of life? ‘point, purpose’ What does ‘capitalist’ mean to you? ‘convey’ What does ‘cornea’ mean? ‘refer to in the world’ It is the last kind of use that comes closest to the focus of linguistic semantic; but even this is a special kind of enquiry. The questions asks for a definition, which is a somewhat unusual form of reply, found more in dictionaries than in everyday speech, that involves the ‘translation’ of the difficult word into ‘easier’ words. The study of the properties of definitions is an important part of semantics, but it is only a part. Of greater importance is the study of the way in which words and sentences convey meaning in the everyday situations of speech and writing. II. Three conceptions of meaning 1. Words and things A popular view is that words ‘name’ or ‘refer to’ things – a view that can be found in the pages of Plato’s Cratylus. Proper names like London, Bill Brown, and Daddy illustrate this conception, as do several other words and phrases – the labels attached to objects for sales in a shop, or those found on a pain colour chart. But there are large numbers of words whether it is not possible to see what ‘thing’ the word refers to: verbs such as ask or find; adjectives such as difficult or popular; nouns such as consistency or tradition. In fact, the majority of words seem unable to relate to things, in any clear way. 2. Words, concepts and things This view denies a direct link between words and things, arguing that the relationship can be made only through the use of our minds. For every word, there is an associated concept. One of the best known formulations of this position is the ‘semiotic triangle’ of Ogden Richards (1923, p.99): Thought Symbol Referent Figure 1.1 The ‘semiotic triangle’ of Ogden Richards (1923, p.99, cited in Crystal (1987)) The main criticism of this approach is the insuperable difficulty of identifying ‘concept’. The ‘concept’ underlying a word such as tradition is no easier to define than the ‘thing; referred to by tradition. Some words do have meanings that relatively easy to conceptualize, but we 2 certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind. B. SOURCES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO STUDY OF MEANING The study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, word, phrases, and sentences is called semantics. Subfields of semantics are lexical semantics, which is concerned with meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words; and phrasal or sentential semantics, which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word. The study of how context affects meaning – for example, how the sentence It’s cold in here comes to be interpreted as “close the windows” in certain situations – is called pragmatics. Contributions to semantics have come essentially from two sources – linguistics and philosophy as mentioned above. Linguists have contributed primarily to the study of the core meaning or sense of individual words. Philosophers, on the other hand, have contributed primarily to the study of meaning of sentences. However, rather than trying to characterize the core meaning or sense of sentences directly = which, as we have just seen, is a difficult undertaking – they have approached the semantics of sentences from two other directions: the study of reference and the study of truth conditions. Reference is the study of what objects linguistic expressions (i.e. words, phrases, sentences, and so on) refer to. For example, in the sentence Mulroney is the Prime Minister of Canada, the expression Mulroney and the expression the Prime Minister of Canada refer to the same entity, namely Brain Mulroney. Truth conditional semantics, on the other hand is the study of the condition under which a statement can be judged true or false. In actuality, much of what falls under the name of truth conditions involves truth relations that hold between sentences. For example if the sentence Fred is 80 years old is true, then the sentence Fred is over 50 years old is necessarily true. 3 UNIT 2 SENTENCES, UTTERANCES & PROPOSITIONS To understand the notions of sense, reference, denotation, connotation, extension and intension we should master the basic notions such as sentence, utterance and proposition. A. UTTERANCE I. Definition: An utterance is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after 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 sequence of sentences, or a single phrase or even a single word. (Hurford, 1983, p.15) An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by the speaker's silence. (Source: Crystal 1985, Pei and Gaynor 1954) An utterance is a string of speech found between breaths or pauses. An utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of units of expression such as words and sentences. (Source: Searle 1969) II. Characteristics: - Utterances are physical events/ objects, i.e. they are just uttered or actually used in a particular occasion. When we refer to an utterance we mean a unit of talk or something characterized as in spoken language. Thus, an utterance is realized by accent, phonetic factors and if an utterance is recorded in written form, it is represented with double quotation marks in books or novels as the voice of the characters or speakers or writers or generally the addresser of the message. In communication we can usually hear utterances of non sentences: short phrases or a single word …. For example, - Not too bad. (as a response to the question “How are you?”) - Fire! (as the warning of a fire) Practice 2.1 Now decide whether the following could represent utterances. Please give your answer as Yes or No and consider whether each of them meet the description of an utterance mentioned in the definition. 1) “Hello” 2) “Not much” 4 3) “Utterances are physical events/ objects, i.e. they are just uttered or actually used in a particular occasion. When we refer to an utterance we mean a unit of talk in spoken language. Thus, an utterance is realized by accent, phonetic factors and if an utterance is recorded in written form, it is represented with double quotation marks in books or novels as the voice of the characters or speakers or writers or generally the addresser of the message”. 4) “Pxgotmgt” 5) “Schplotzenpflaaaaaaaaargh!” (Hurford, 1983, p. 15) At this stage, for us to imagine the relationship between an utterance and a sentence we can assume that an utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of units of expression such as words and sentences. B. SENTENCE I. Definition: A sentence is a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language. (Hurford, 1983, p. 16) II. Characteristics: A sentence is a linguistic entity conceived abstractly. We cannot hear it for the fact that the formation of a sentence occurs in our mind. A sentence is never uttered and thus it is not tied to a particular time or place It is grammatical in that it must be conformed to the syntactic rules of a certain language. For example, this sentence is comprehensible because it is structured with the grammatical rules of English: It took Tom 2 hours to finish his enormous dinner. A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words behind various realizations in utterances and inscriptions. We can just realize a sentence by hearing its communicative realization as the utterance or looking at its inscription in the book. A sentence is said to be abstract because it is not associated to any phonetic characteristics. Therefore it would make sense to say that an utterance was in a particular accent (i.e. a particular way of pronouncing words). However, it would not make strict sense to say that a sentence was in a particular accent. A sentence expresses a complete thought, i.e. it typically is composed of a subject and a predicate each of which correspond to the thing/person being talked about and the characteristics about the subject. E.g. Fred is handsome. (sentence) Subject Predicate (linguistic function) A person characteristic (meaning) Sentence types: This is the basic classification of sentences into types: 5 • Declarative, e.g., Ellen went to the library. • Interrogative, e.g., Did Ellen go to the library? • Imperative, e.g., (Ellen) Go to the library! • Optative, e.g., I wish Ellen went to the library. Normally, there is a default correspondence between sentence types and speech acts. (see further reading below). Practice 2.2 Which of the following sentences are tokens of whole (complete) sentences? and which is not? 1) “John” 4) “It’s mine”. 2) “Who is there?” 5) “Where shall I …?” 3) “Mine” (Hurford, 1983, p.16; P.18) C. PROPOSITION I. Definition: A proposition is the basic meaning which a sentence expresses. A proposition consists of (a) something which is named or talked about (known as argument, or entity); (b) an assertion or predication which is made about the argument. A proposition is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs. (Hurford, 1983, p.19) (In speech act semantics) A proposition is that part of the meaning of a clause or sentence that is constant, despite changes in such things as the voice or illocutionary force of the clause. Here a distinction is made between the propositional meaning of a sentence, and its illocutionary force (i.e. the use made of the sentence in communication, e.g. as a request, a warning, a promise). (Richard (1985), p.297) E.g. a) Anh đi. b) Anh đi à? c) Anh đi ư? d) Anh đi nhé. e) Anh đi đi. These utterances have the same proposition P [anh đi]. However, each of them has a distinctive voice or illocutionary force F as follows. 6 a) Anh đi. (Informing) b) Anh đi (questioning) c) Anh đi ư? (questioning with surprise) d) Anh đi nhé. (Informing with attention) e) Anh đi đi. (request/order) We can have the semantic structure of an utterance as follows: F (P) F: Illocutionary force (stating the purpose of the utterance: whether it is a statement, a question or an order …) P: Proposition (that part of meaning of a sentence/ an utterance: constant) II. Characteristics: The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expressions in the sentence. In uttering a declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts a proposition. The meaning of a sentence or utterance can be judged by examing the truth condition of the proposition. If a particular speaker utters two sentences and only one of these sentences is true whereas the other is false, we can say that these two sentences express two different propositions. E.g. We can say the sentences i) and ii) have the same proposition if both of them are true or false (Assuming in each case the same name Harry refers to the same person), but the sentences iii) and iv) express different propositions. i) Harry took out the agarbage. ii) Harry took the garbage out. iii) Harry loves Mary. iv) Mary loves John. Thus, when a speaker utters a simple declarative sentence, he commits himself to the truth of the corresponding proposition. We can know a proposition is true if we know that the state-of-affairs mentioned in the proposition is true to our knowledge about the world. In this case, a true proposition is a fact. For example, in the present-day world we know that it is a fact that there are lions in Africa or it is a fact that Mr. Nguyen Tan Dung is the present Prime Minister of Vietnam. Practice 2.3 7 Now let us think about the truth of the following propositions. Is each of these propositions is true or false regarding your knowledge about the present-day world? 1) Portugal defeated Germany in the quarter final of Euro 08 tournament. 2) Nicole Kidman is American. 3) The champions of Euro 08 are German. 4) Semantics is the study of speech sounds. D. THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROPOSITIONS-SENTENCES-UTTERANCES I. Proposition vs. Thought: Proposition is an object or product of thought. A proposition can be thought of as something to entertain in an individual’s mind. On the other hand, the same proposition can be grasped by many different people. In this sense, it can be private or public. For example, a Vietnamese person and an English person may look into the sky and at the same time each of them may have the same proposition about the state-of-affairs in their own mind. A sentence expresses a complete thought (a proposition) which consists of a noun (to refer to a particular thing) and a predicate (a verb, adjective to specify the thing denoted by a noun) II. Sentences vs utterances: 1. A sentence is a linguistic unit/entity whereas an utterance is an action of communicating. A sentence is a linguistic unit in that this entity is composed of units of language such as words, phrases and put together by grammatical rules of a certain language (Vietnamese or English). An utterance is a speech act in that it in making an utterance we have to make an act of uttering a sentence or a phrase to communicate a message. In this sense, whatever we say, the significance is that we actually communicate a message. For example, whatever we say like “How do you do, Good morning, Hi… we are actually making an act of greeting, i.e. a speech act. 2. A sentence is realized by an utterance or many different utterances. We can only realize the words, phrases and sentence structure of what we say as a sentence through the realization of an actual utterance. Briefly, a sentence may have different utterances as tokens. 8 P[mưa] P[rain ] III. Propositions-Sentences-Utterances We can say that the same proposition can be encoded by a sentence or more than one sentence with different structures and words. For example, when we look into the sky and see this , we can express our thought about this phenomenon with one of the following sentences: It’s raining. It rains. It has started raining. Here comes the rain. It’s rainy. At this stage, these potential sentences are conceived as abstract units of language that stay in your mind. When we already determine on what sentence to speak it out, we just make an act of uttering this sentence and we actually make an utterance. However, the same sentence can be realized into many different utterances depending on the context of utterance, such as the time and place of utterance, who utters it, who is intended to receive the message of the utterance. For example, the same sentence It’s raining can be uttered by different speakers in different contexts, and accordingly can be interpreted as different utterances with different implications or purposes. Man to girlfriend: “It’s raining”. (Please stay here) Girl to mother: “It’s raining”. (I can’t go to buy the salt for you) Wife to husband: “It’s raining”. (Please collect the clothes on the hanging rope in the garden) To sum up, to make a verbal communicate act, a speaker typically starts with the process of producing a proposition in his/her mind. Then he/she may have the need to speak it out. To do this, he/she has to put words together into a sentence. Now, if he decides to speak it out, he/she just says it loud in the form of speech sounds with a certain intonation pattern. This is an action of communication with an utterance as a unit of talk. If the same speaker or another speaker utters this sentence in a different particular occasion with a different intention or purpose, they are said to make different utterances. This process can be represented in the diagrams below. The representation of the three-phase process of making an utterance 9 Further reading http://www.lingo.ntnu.no/engsem/Pages/terms.html#Anchor Propositional meaning: 10 [...]... …) But we should remember that we can only do this if the linguistic expression “your left ear” is comprehensible, i.e we can understand this piece of language to fulfill the order “Touch your left ear” Table 3.1 Reference and the function of connecting language to the world Reference: the relationship between the expression (part of the language) and the referent (part of the world) The referent: part... emotive function of language and is employed whenever the speaker tries to express an attitude or an emotion by using language D REFERENCE VS SENSE, EXTENSION AND DENOTATION 1 In talking of sense we deal with relationships inside the language, bachelor = never married In this sense, sense is the intension of a lexical unit 2 In talking of reference we deal with the relationship between language and the world... reading 14 http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisitcTerms In discussions about semantic analysis, a sense is the meaning of a lexical unit E.g "define each sense of the lexeme" "compare lexically related senses" Sense: http://www.lingo.ntnu.no/engsem/Pages/terms.html#Anchor Sense is determined by how the expression at hand relates to other expressions in the same language Frege's (1892) classical... which employs a formal metalanguage Using this approach the meaning of words is decomposed into smaller components of meaning, called features The meaning of "man" for instance, can be decomposed into: [HUMAN] [MALE] [ADULT] One of the conventions in componential analysis is to use capital letters for the feature labels to suggest that this is a metalinguistic use of language Another convention is... Based on the relationship between the linguistic expression my dog and the referent the living creature being talked about in that situation, we can say that reference is the relationship between a particular linguistic expression and the referent being pointed at in a particular occasion or context This relationship can be illustrated in the diagram below Linguistic expression Reference Referent 13... that can be defined for their use in the language, but they do not denote anything outside the language E SENSE VS PROPOSITION 1 A proposition corresponds to a complete independent thought As we have mentioned earlier, a proposition is the basic meaning which a sentence expresses and thus it consists of (a) something which is named or talked about (usually linguistically realized as subject or object... sought in the extra-linguistic entity an expression (the smallest expression being a word) picks out in the real world (the referent) The main justification for this type of approach is that language is used to talk about the world and the objects "out there" which attract our attention Thus, from this perspective, the most natural thing to do in order to interpret messages encoded in language is to look... and says something about entities present in the communicative context, language is used with a referential function The question here is how can this function be achieved? In everyday conversations, very often we make use of body language such as pointing with our finger at the thing we are taking about And in most cases, linguistic expressions of various types may be utilized to fulfill this referential... reference has something to do with the extension of a word or phrase, and in its broader sense, for some linguists, it can be understood as denotation Like extension, the denotation of a word is the relationship between the word and the set of entities, situations, and attributes that exist outside the language In its most common use of the word cat denotes (or refers to) a class of small four-legged domesticated... MEANING & CONNOTATIVE MEANING I Denotative meaning (Denotation): According to some linguists, namely Fromkin, Blair and Collins (1990), denotation is a type of meaning that can be described in terms of a set of semantic properties which serve to identify the concept associated with the word in question To some other linguists, denotation is that part of meaning of a word or phrase that relates it to . that goes with the process of meaning. Linguists study the elements or features of meaning as they are related in a linguistic system. General semanticists. defined, the study of meaning of linguistic expressions. 2. Semantics is, more narrowly defined, the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions apart from