THE STUDY OF MEANING

Semantics
 What is meaning?
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I went to the store this morning.

All dogs are animals.
a. You are too young to drink.
b. You are not old enough to drink.
a. Harold spent several years in northern Tibet.
b. The unmarried woman is married to a bachelor.
My toothbrush is happy.
I saw her duck.

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 Referential, social, and affective
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meaning
Referential meaning One way of defining meaning
is to say that the meaning of a word or sentence is the
person, object, abstract notion, event, or state to which
the word or sentence makes reference.
Social meaning The level of meaning that we rely on
when we identify certain social characteristics of
speakers and situations from the character of the
language used.
Affective meaning The emotional connotation that is
attached to words and utterances.

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 Denotation and connotation
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We can see that meaning is not a simple notion but a

complex combination of several aspects: referential
meaning (the real-word objects or concepts described
by language); social meaning (what the language users
feel about the topics discussed).

The referential meaning of a word or sentence is

frequently called denotation in contrast to connotation
which includes social and affective meaning.

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 Word meaning, sentence meaning and
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utterance meaning
Content wordsprincipally nouns, verbs, adjectives,
and adverbshave meaning in that they refer to
concrete objects and abstract concepts; are marked
as being characteristics of particular context and
convey information about the feelings and attitudes
of language users.
Function wordsprincipally prepositions and
articles that also carry meaning

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 LEXICON
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The lexicon can be viewed as a compendium of all the words of a

language. The study of words is called lexicology.
Words are sometimes called as lexical items or lexeme.
Lexical semantics is primarily concerned with word meanings.
How do we classify these relationships?
Hyponymy
Synonymy
Antonymy
Polysemy vs. homonymy
Extension, such as methaphorical extension vs. Intension

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 What do we know about the lexical
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system in English?
1. denotation and connotation
2. Meaning relations among words
a. Syntagmatic relations
She is collecting stamps.
He keeps smiling.
b. Paradigmatic relations ~ lexical relations
synonyms, antonyms, hyponymy, polysemy,
meronymy, etc

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 Sentences, utterances, and Propositions
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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 language.

A sentence can be thought of as the ideal

string of words behind the various
realizations in utterances and inscriptions.

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 SENTENCE MEANING
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It depends on individual words that make it up.

The meaning of the sentence could be the sum of the
meaning of its words.
Sentences are not tied to a particular time and place.
Sentences are tied by grammatical rules.
Consider these examples:
a. It will be great.
b. They reviewed what they had studied last night.
c. We are learning Semantics now.

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 Utterances
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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 a sequence of
sentences, or a single phrase, or even a
single word.

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 Utterance Meaning
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It can be in the form of word, phrase, or sentence.

Utterances are tied to a particular time and place.
Consider these:
a. Shut up!
b. cannot
c. oops!
d. next

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 Proposition (1)
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It is that part of the meaning of the

utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs.

True propositions correspond to the facts

but false propositions do not correspond
to facts.

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 Proposition (2)
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The simplest type of proposition

consists of an argument and a
predicate (what is said about the
argument).

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 Cont
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In the proposition Pete is tall, Pete is the

argument and (is) tall is the predicate.
Some predicates need more than one
argument to form a complete proposition:
like, for instance, requires two (Pete likes
Liz) and give requires three (Pete gave
Liz a present).

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 Proposition (3)
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Predicates may be described as one-

place, two-place or three-place according
to the number of arguments they take. A
proposition has a truth value, that is, it is
either true or false.

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 Proposition (4)
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It is not a linguistic expression, nor is it

tied to any particular linguistic expression.
The same proposition may be expressed
by different linguistic means, and a given
sentence may be used to express
different propositions on different
occasions.

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 Proposition (5)
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The proposition is what is asserted in

a statement, what is questioned in a
question (Is Pete here?) and what is
denied in a negation (Pete is not
here).

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 Proposition (5)
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A proposition is an abstraction that can be

grasped by the mind of an individual person. In
this sense, a proposition is an object of thought
because thoughts are usually to be private,
personal, mental processes, whereas
propositions is accessible to different person:
different individuals can grasp the same
proposition.

The Monday Club deposed Mrs. Thatcher. Or Mr.

Thatcher was deposed by The Monday Club.

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 Pragmatics vs. Semantics (1)
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Pragmatics is defined as another branch

of linguistics that is concerned with
meaning.

Pragmatics and semantics, both, are

concerned with the speakers ability to
use the language meaningfully.

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 Pragmatics vs. Semantics (2)
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Semantics is mainly concerned with the

speakers competence to use the language
system in producing meaningful utterances and
processing (comprehending) utterances
produced by others, the chief focus of
pragmatics is a persons ability to derive
meanings from specific kinds of speech
situations.

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 Pragmatics vs. Semantics (3)
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Deriving meaning from the speech situations

means to recognize what the speaker is
referring to, to relate new information to what
has gone before, to interpret what is said from
background knowledge about the speaker and
the topic of discourse, and to infer or to fill in
information that the speaker takes for granted
and does not bother to say.

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 Examples
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Jim: Would you like to go dancing tomorrow night?

Barbara: We have guests coming out of town.

Instead answering yes or nor as the question demands,

Barbara answers it by no but in implicit way.

Barry: How did you do on exam?

Laura: I think Ill just drop this course.

(Implicit meaning is I cannot do it.)

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 Summary (1)
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Denotation ~ referential meaning

Connotation
social meaning and affective meaning
The term used for written language is sentence
while it is for the oral language is utterance.
Sentence must be in a good structure but utterance
can be a chunk of a sentence or a sentence itself.
Pragmatics is different from semantics to some
extents.
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 Summary (2)
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Proposition can be formed by constructing a simple

sentence which consists of one argument and one
predicate.
The term argument and predicate is used in
Semantics in which it is different from when you
discuss subject and predicate. Hence, it helps you to
get more understanding in learning a language. It is
to know which is form and meaning.

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 References
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Kreidler, Charles W. 1998. Introducing English

Semantics. Routhledge: London

Cruse, Alan. 2006. A Glossary of Semantics and

Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press Ltd:
Edinburgh

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