Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Mouloud Mammery University of Tizi-Ouzou
Faculty of Letters and Humanities
Department of English
Semantics : Theories and approaches to meaning
Presented by Sonia BEN SIDI AHMED
Lidia HABEL
Souhila SAHI
Supervised by Dr. Souryana YASSINE
Content
Introduction
I-
Definition of Semantics
II-
The Emergence of Semantics
III-
The Importance of Semantics
IV-
The Meaning of Meaning
V-
Sense Relations
VI-
Different Approaches To The Study Of Meaning
1-Traditional Approach To Meaning
2- The Behavioral Approach To Meaning
3- Structural Approach To Meaning
4-The Generative Approach To Meaning
VII-
Pragmatics
1-
Semantics Vs Pragmatics
2-
Pragmatics According to Different Authors
3-
One major theory of pragmatics
3-1- Austin’s Speech Act Theory
3-1-a- Locutionary Act
3-1-b- Illocutionary Act
3-1-c- Perlocutionary Act
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Human language is an interface used by people to convey meaning. It is the only entity which
differentiates man from other animals since it develops mind. Saussure defines language as a system of
relation. (Lyons,1995:50)It uses signs instead of instinctive sounds. The signs include expressions,
gestures and so on. The study of language signs gave rise to a new dimension in language study which is
semantics. Although it is a new field of study but holds great potential since it relates language to other
fields.
It is conventional that the subject matter of semantics is meaning. Thus linguists and semanticians
raise several questions about the notion of meaning: how it is constructed by the users of language, from
what perspectives it can be perceived, and how it can be related to other linguistic approach to language.
In this paper, we shall attempt to introduce the key words related to the subject matter. Then, we
will make a brief survey on the emergence of semantics. After, we will give a brief sight on different
approaches to semantics from structuralism to behaviorism, then to generativism. At last we shall try to
introduce pragmatics and relate it to semantics.
I-Definition of Semantics:
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines semantics as: the study of meanings.
a: the historical and psychological study and the classification of changes in the signification of
words or forms viewed as factors in linguistic development .
b: semiotic : the branch of semiotic dealing with the relations between signs and what they refer to
and including theories of denotation, extension, naming, and truth.
From this definition, we notice that there are Two different kind of semantics which are
philosophical semantics and linguistic semantics.( Encyclopedia Britannica 2010)
II-
The Emergence of Semantics
The term “semantics” was first coined by Breal in 1897. Yet other scholars before tried to study
meaning. Philosophers attempt to the study of meaning resulted on the philosophical semantics. This
latter examines the relationships between linguistic expressions and the phenomena they refer to in the
external world. I t also examines how an expression can be either true or false according to the context it
is used in. Plato and Aristotle worked on the philosophical semantics.
The contemporary philosophical semantics is a continuity of philosophical semantics. We find it in
the works of Pierce. However it brought a new area which is semiotics. ( Article published by the
National Open University of Nigeria entitled Introduction to semantics Page:5)
III-
The Importance of Semantics
Semantics is central to the study of communication which is an important factor in social
organization. It is also concerned with the human mind (thought processes, cognition and
conceptualization).
Semantics is clearly tied to all features of human society. Thus it directly connects
language and culture. It mainly relies on context to understand the meaning of expressions
and other form of signs in the language. The example of colors representation well illustrates
the different meanings colors have whenever the context is different.
IV-The meaning of meaning
From the definition stated above, the subject matter of semantics is meaning. Thus it is essential to
understand what meaning is.
Lyons(1989) reported that Ogden and Richards in their book “the Meanings of Meaning”( 1923)
gave many definitions to the word meaning. Ogden and Richards wanted to show how confusion and
misunderstanding come about because of luck of agreement about such basic terms as meaning.
In the study of meaning, a distinction should be made between sense and reference. On one hand,
sense refers to a place which a word (lexical item) holds in the system of relationship with other words
in the vocabulary of a language. For example the English word married and bachelor have the sense
relationship, bachelor means never married. On the other hand Reference means the relationship
between the words and the things, actions, events and the qualities they stand for.
Reference is the relationship between words and an entity in the external world. An example of this:
tree is the lexical item existing in the language system and the living creature which we find in our
environment is its reference.
Denotative meaning
It is that part of the meaning of the word related to phenomenon in the real world or fictional world.
(Encyclopedia Britannica 2010)( Dragon for example is part of the fictional world). For instance The
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary(2007) defines the word fish as a creature living in water, breaths
through gills, and uses fines and tail to swim.
Connotative meaning: effective meaning, emotive meaning. This meaning shows people emotion
and attitudes towards what a word refers to.(Encyclopedia Britannica 2010) If we take the word
“woman” when hearing it different things came to our minds (affectionate, pretty, weak… etc )
Associative meaning: it is the total of all the meanings a person thinks of when he / she hears the
words (Encyclopedia Britannica 2010). Let’s take the example of winter; we tend to associate it with
snow, cold, coat …etc.
Collocative meaning: it consists of the associations a word acquires in relation to the meaning of
words which occur in its environment. The two adjectives handsome and pretty well clarify this. They
share common ground in meaning “good looking” but may be distinguished by the nouns they co-occur
or collocate with. Pretty collocates with women for instance and handsome collocates with men.(Oxford
Advanced Learner’s dictionary 2007)
Thematic meaning: it is what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a writer organizes
messages in terms of focus (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2007 ). The following example will
demonstrate how focus determines the meaning conveyed
Mrs. Smith donated the first prize.
The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith
The active sentence is an answer to the question what did Mrs. Smith donate. The passive sentence
answers the question who donated the first prize.
Word meaning: the question of meaning is related to the meaning of individual words (lexical
items). For instance in the sentence “my brother is a spinster”, we have to know the meaning of brother
and spinster to understand why this sentence is unacceptable.
In the word meaning we have to clarify three points:
-
The distinction between content and function words. We are concerned with content words
-
The distinction between denotative and connotative meaning.
-
Meaning is double faced (reference). Word meaning is related to culture and society.
Componential analysis: the analysis of word meaning is a process of breaking down the sense of a
word into its minimal components:
Ex: Man
woman
Boy
girl
These words belong to the semantic field of human race. Man and boy belong to the category of
males, woman and girl belong to the category of female. Man and woman belong to the category of
adult, whereas boy and girl belong to the category of young.
In this example two dimensions of meaning are shown that of sex and adulthood. Another
dimension of meaning is expressed by human and non human.
The meaning of these items can be expressed by combination of these features:
Man: + human+ adult+ male.
Woman: + human +adult -male.
Boy: + human-adult+ male
Girl: +human-adult-male
These formulae are called the componential definitions of the items. The dimensions of meanings
are called syntactic oppositions.( Lyons,1989)
V-Sense relations
Sense relations are the relations of sense holding within sets of lexemes (Lyons,1989:270).
Synonymy: it means a word which has the same meaning as another. Hide for instance has the
same meaning as conceal. Lyons argues that there are two kinds of synonymy. On one hand we have
total synonymy where the word can replace its synonym in any given context. To reach the total
synonymy, Lyons argues that there are two conditions to achieve total synonymy: Interchangeability and
identity in cognitive and emotive import. On the other hand , we have the complete
synonymy.(Lyons,1995,447)
Hyponymy: it is a relationship in which the meaning of a word includes the meaning of other
words. John Lyons uses the examples of cow and rose to demonstrate the relationship of hyponymy. He
argues that a caw is a hyponym of animal and a rose is a hyponym of flowers. So caw and flower are
specific categories included in general ones. Hence hyponymy suggests the relationship of inclusion and
subordination .The specific term is called hyponym and the general term is called a super
ordinate.(Lyons,1989:291)
Antonymy: It is the oppositeness of meaning between lexemes. Antonomy depends on
dichotomization. Thus antonymy is a binary contrast. Lyons gives the following examples to show this
contrast: high: low, buy: sell, front: back, etc.(Lyons, 1989:271)
A distinction is made between the two pairs. A person who is not dead must be alive, but something
which is not big is not necessarily small.
Dead and alive are called complementaries or ungradable antonyms. Big and small are called
gradable antonyms.(Ibid)
Polyssemy: a word having two or related meaning. Foot can have different meaning according to
where it occurs. He hurts his foot, she stand at the foot of the stairs. The foot is the lowest part of the
stairs, just as the foot is lowest part of the human body.(Encyclopedia Britannica 2010)
Homonymy: words which are written in the same way and sound alike but have different meaning.
The verb lie can have different meaning according to the context in which it is used.(Encyclopedia
Britannica 2010)
-
You have to lie down
-
Don’t lie, tell the truth.
VI- Different Approaches to the study of meaning
In this unite the main interest will be on the different Linguistic schools
dealing with the study of meaning . Each school studied meaning from different
perspectives by following a particular methodological path. Moreover, each one
contributed to the evolvement and advancement of semantics as an autonomous study of
linguistic unites and the sense they covey in relation to their used context. There are four
major approaches to the study of meaning; the Traditional semantics, Behavioral
semantics, Structural semantics, and finely the Generative approach to semantics.
1-Traditional semantics:
The study of language is thought to have begun from the antiquity and also being part
of philosophy, under the works of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, among others. The Greek
philosophers highlighted the point that names and the objects they refer to, share a relation
of meaning (Lyons, 1995: 403).Furthermore, these philosophers stressed their enquiry on
the property of the language itself, in other words, they debated about the origins of
language either it is naturalist or conventional. (C.Ogbulogo, et al, 2011: 25).
The naturalist view stipulates that language is a divine present that separates the
human beings from the state of animals. The Nurturists or Conventionalists, contrast this
view by arguing that the nature of language is rather a matter of social contract belonging
to its speech community. In addition, language was regarded to be conventional and as the
production of the human being for the purpose of communicating meaning (Ibid).
The relation between form and meaning, as the reference of words to their
significant meanings, kept the interest of philosophers as Carnap (1927), Firth (1957) and
Ayer (1936).Some other scholars such as Grice (1957) and Katz (1972) advanced that the
speaker’s/hearer’s mind constructs a mental image of a word as well as s/he is able to
interpret sounds and forms related to it. (ibid).
2- Behavioral semantics:
The Behaviorist psychological theory was developed first as a theory of learning by
J.B.Watson and B.F.Skinner and later applied to diverse disciplines as we may state
Linguistics. The principals of the Behaviorist approach to the study of language and meaning
was first introduced and applied by Leonard Bloomfield, also labeled as the father of the
American structuralism. Such principles consist of studying the subject matter in terms of
observable, empirical and concrete behavior it may produce, which is subject to stimuli
conditioned by its environment and then resulting a response. In brief, a behavior is a
matter of stimulus and response of which both are predetermined by the surrounding
background, thus this theory is considered to be rather an antimentalist one .(Lyons,1993:
122,123).
The behaviorist view on language study tend to describe the language as a verbal
behavior subject to observation and recording, which is acquired thanks to drills and over
repetition of grammatical utterances. The study of meaning by behavioral theorists was
missing the explanatory aspect in terms of the abstract representation of meaning in the
mind of the language user. The main interest for them was about the description of the
grammatical unites conveying meaning. They tried to explain meaning by experimental
means; in vain, their methods lacked in explicitness and logic, especially when describing
active and passive sentences which was regarded as two distinct structures though they
held the same idea; example: ACTIVE: He wrote the book.
PASSIVE: The book was written by Him.
Infact, the discipline avoided to go further with abstractions such as concepts, Ideas and
mental representation of meaning.
3-Structural semantics:
European Structuralism may be defined as Structural linguistics; an approach on the
scientific study of language mainly elaborated in the famous posthumous work of the
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,” Course in General Linguistics”. Saussure
established a scientific method of language study and revolutionized the old fashioned
historical and comparative studies on language by pointing out the importance of the
Synchronic immediate Linguistic study through the settling of some fundamental scientific
methods as : objectivity, systemacity and explicitness. He introduced further dichotomies
as
paradigmatic/syntagmatic,
signifier/signified,
langue/parole dualism.(Wikipedia) .
synchronic/diachronic
study
and
Structuralism as a linguistic study has impacted on the study of meaning as
structural semantics. This latter deal with the sense relations, or meaning relations, of
words within the same structure a syntagmatic one, or outside of the structure a
paradigmatic relation. (Lyons, 1993: 270,317).
The relation of linearity (syntagmatic) occurs in a linier position within the same
sentence, but this relationship is characterized by collocation words. Such words are
denoted to be fixed words, ex: In this sentence” shall we go to have lunch in a Fast Food
“we can see that the words Fast and Food have a sense relation and are considered to sound
righter to the native English speaker and that the sentence would seem meaningless if the
word Fast is replaced by Quick. In addition to this there are specific expressions which go
with a certain words, as an example we can state this sentence “this man is Handsome
“.The word Handsome goes only with man but not with words like woman.
The paradigmatic relation consists of some main relations such as:
1) Antonymy or more precisely relation of contrast as stated in the example below: the words High
and Low are opposed to each other by a sense relation of contrast
a) This mountain is high
b) This river is low
2) Relations of synonymy (similarity) ,for instance in the example be low we notice that that the
words sweet and gentle expresses the same meaning in both sentences 2-a and 2-b
2-a) this person is so sweet with me.
2-b) this person is so gentle with me.
3) Hyponymy relations are relations of
inclusion, they are related by what major linguistic
scholars as Lyons call class inclusion.(291)
For instance the word yellow is considered as a hyponym of the word red since thy belong to the
same class category which is colors. Thus we may say that:
3-a) she is wearing a yellow hood.
As well as :
3-b) she is wearing a red hood.(Ibid)
4-Generative approach on semantics:
Noam Chomsky established Generative linguistics in the early 1960’s as a
revolutionary theory on language scope of study and was obviously considered as a
mentalist approach. This theory offers a new regard to the mental conception and
interpretation of linguistic items, it also pays attention to the importance of meaning in the
abstract aspect of language. The Generativist approach inspired to the creation of many sub
disciplines, among them Generative semantics.
Generative semantics, inspired by the work of Chomsky in his book “Aspects of the
theory of Syntax” (1965), is a linguistic research program that is specified in the study of
meaning according to the principles of the Generativist school (Wikipedia). The initial
focus of Generative semantics is directed at the level of the Deep structure. It is stated that
the deep structure present as a mental construct in the individual’s mind, determines the
original meaning of a sentence and then is subject to many transformations thanks to the
transformational rules (active/passive, interrogative/affirmative…etc.) (C.Ogbulogo, et al:
27)
Later some complexities were found on the explanation on the process of the
diversity of sentences that derives from one single Deep structure. Their meanings and
interpretations are considered as a major point of interest for Generative semantics. Indeed,
they highlight the fact that meaning and syntax are interrelated at the level of linguistic
organization. Generative semanticists make a distinction between the semantic component
and the syntactic component (ibid). On the one hand, the semantic component is
responsible for specifying
combinations of sentence unites or even sentences to a form
meaningful composition of words and sounds or coherent speech. On the other hand,
syntactic component is the part, which is the grammatical source, dealing with the process
of structural patterns that organizes the semantic component to form sentences.
The study of meaning has witnessed diverse approaches and methods in defining
its property and significance. The traditionalists tended to define meaning according to
philosophy; the Behaviorist school relied on the study of the verbal aspect it can denote.
Structuralism, on the other hand, focused on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic sense
relation of words and the Generativists depicted the mental aspect of meaning
representation relying on the bases of Chomsky’s deep structure.
VII - Pragmatics
1-
Semantics Vs Pragmatics
Meaning is a complex and nuanced notion and concept. Indeed every field of study and theory has
its particular meaning of meaning. As students of linguistics, we are interested in meaning as a key
concept that shapes the study of the two subfields of linguistics: semantics and pragmatics. The former
interest on the study of meaning. In fact, the semantic process focuses on the relationship between
signifiers
like
words,
phrases,
signs,
symbols
and
what
they
stand
for;
their
denotations.(Guirand,1966:11). Whereas the latter provides an account of how sentences of how
sentences are used in utterances to convey information in context. ( Kempson: 1988, 139).
To speak is to transmit an information as Emile Benveniste claimed ‘’ with the sentence we
leave the field of language as a system of signs to move to another world, the one of language as an
instrument of communication’’ (Benveniste, 1966, 130). In fact, this is the core and the objective of the
pragmatic analysis, moreover, it is the study of the relationship between the linguistic forms entities and
expressions and their users.
Semantics is the study of the relationship between linguistics forms and entities in the world
i.e. how words literally connect to things. Whereas pragmatics is the study of relationships between
linguistic forms and users of those forms. The advantage of studying language via pragmatics is that one
can talk about people’s intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals and the kinds of
actions( example: request)that are performing when they speak. (Yule, 2001:preface).
Pragmatics involves how speakers use language in contextualized social interaction, how they
do things with words, as Austen would say. Semantics invites a focus on meaning and truth conditions
without regard to communication and context. Thus, aspects of the interpretation of utterances that do
not involve truth conditions are commonly considered outside the domain of semantics, Green (1989)
says. Whether an utterance is a promise, a prediction, or a question and how metaphorical expressions
are understood are matters of pragmatics, not semantics.
2. Pragmatics according to difference authors:
What we need in addition is some function that tells us about the meaning of utterances … The
domain of this pragmatic function is the set of utterances, which are pairs of sentences and contexts, so
that for each utterance, our function will return as a value a new context, the context as changed by the
sentence uttered… And we can treat the meaning of the utterances as the difference between the original
context and the context arrived at by utterance that sentences. [This applies to only] a restricted subset of
pragmatics aspects of meaning. (Gazdar,1979:45)
Pragmatics studies the use of language in context, and the context dependence of various aspects of
linguistic interpretation….[Its branches include the theory of how] one and the same sentence can
express different meanings or propositions from context, owning to ambiguity or propositions from
context, owning to ambiguity or indexicality or both… speech act theory, and the theory of
conversational implicature. (Lycan, 1995 : 588)
3-One major theories of pragmatics:
The pragmatic study takes its roots from the classical theory of John Austin’s speech act, which is a
part of philosophy of language. (Garric and Calas,2007:84)
3-1- Austin’s Speech Act Theory
Speech act theory was advanced by John Austin in his book entitled How To Do Things With
Words(1962). One of the principles upon which language is based is to do actions with words such:
swearing, ordering, requesting and promising. (Garric and calas: 84)
Austin proposed that in uttering sentences, one is also doing things, and hence three kinds of acts
are simultaneously performed:
3-1-a- Locutionary Act: the act of uttering a sentence which is meaningful and can be understood.
For example, saying the sentence open the door is a locutionary act if the hearer understands the words
which constitute the sentence ( open, the, door) and identify the particular door the speaker refer to.
3-1-b- Illocutionary Act : using the sentence to perform a function like an offer, a promise, etc.
The speaker expresses his intention. For instance, open the door may be intended as a request or an
order.
3-1-c- Perlocutionary Act : the bringing about of effects on the audience/ hearer by means of
uttering the sentence. It involves achieving certain effects on the hearer such, persuading, convincing,
amusing, etc. ( Garric and Calas, 2007: 88)
Conclusion
This work was an attempt to explore the field of semantics. We introduced the entire concept
related to semantics in order to clarify ambiguities and confusion about the word meaning and how it is
interpreted by the others. It was essential to relate semantics to the linguistic approaches to meaning
since it is central to any study of language. We explored how traditional studies dealt with meaning,
then we moved to the structuralist view on meaning. At last, we related meaning to the generativist
approach of language.
We noticed that it was fundamental to see what the relation between semantics and pragmatics is,
and how difference can be made between the two fields.
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