Studying Meaning

Studying Meaning

1. Semantics

   • Is the study of sentence meaning and word meaning
     • Detonation is whatever it denotes
       • Learnt by such processes of live demonstration and pointing is an ostension
         • Formal Semantics its a system of formal logic description
           • Reference is what speakers do when they use expressions
             • Deictic expressions are words that have to be interpreted in relation to the situation
               • Proposition is the term for a kind of core sentence meaning

2. Pragmatics

   • Is the study of utterance meaning
   • Implicatures
   • Explicatures

3. Semantics and pragmatics are two main branches of the linguistic study of meaning

   • There are different ways of communicating the same message
     • Pragmatics distinguished from semantics
       • Utterances
         • The raw data of linguistics
           • Utterances are interpreted in context.
       • Sentence
         • The abstract linguistic object on which an utterance is based
           • Sentences are abstract
     • Literal Meaning of a sentence is based on just the semantic information
       • An explicature is a basic interpretation of an utterance
         • Senders meaning is the meaning that the speakers or writer intends to convey by means of an utterance
           • Utterance meaning is a necessary fiction that linguistics doing semantics and pragmatics have to work with.