Semantics in Linguistics

Semantics in Linguistics

1. the study of meaning communicated through language. Semantics is the most diverse field within linguistics. in addition, semantics have to have at a nodding acquaintance with others disciplines, like philosophy and psychology, which also investigate the creation and transmission of meaning

   • basic tasks involved in establishing semantics as a branch of linguistics
     • semantics and semiotics
       • Ferdinand de Saussure (1974) have stressed that
         • The study of linguistic meaning is a part of this general study of the use of sign systems, which is called semiotics. Semioticians investigate the types of relationship that may hold between a sign and the object it represents, or in de Saussure’s terminology between a signifier and its signified.
     • Three Challenges in Doing Semantics
       • there are three issues
         • The first is the problem of circularity. How can we state the meaning of a word, except in other words, either in the same or a different language?
         • A second problem we will meet is how to make sure that our definitions of a word’s meaning are exact.
         • A third type of challenge facing us comes from looking at what particular utterances mean in context. Semantic analysis must be more complicated than attaching definitions to linguistic expressions.
     • Meeting the Challenges
       • Possible strategies
         • To cope with the problem of circularity, one solution is to design a semantic metalanguage with which to describe the semantic units and rules of all languages.
         • Setting up a metalanguage might help too with the problem of relating semantic and encyclopaedic knowledge, since designing meaning representations, for example for words, involves arguing about which elements of knowledge should be included.
         • In tackling the third problem, of context, one traditional solution has been to assume a split in an expression’s meaning between the local contextual effects and a context-free element of meaning, which we might call conventional or literal meaning.
     • Semantics in a Model of Grammar
       • It have been suggested for many linguistics that
         • the aim of doing semantics is to set up a component of the grammar which will parallel other components like syntax or phonology.
     • Word meaning and sentence meaning
       • one central issue is the relationship between word meaning and sentence meaning
         • Phrases and sentences also have meaning of course, but an important difference between word meaning on the one hand and phrase and sentence meaning on the other concerns productivity. It is always possible to create new words, but this is a relatively infrequent occurrence. On the other hand, speakers regularly create sentences that they have never used or heard before, confident that their audience will understand them.
         • So the meanings of sentences cannot be listed in a lexicon like the meanings of words: they must be created by rules of combination too. Semanticists often describe this by saying that sentence meaning is compositional. This term means that the meaning of an expression is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way in which they are combined.
     • Some Important Assumptions
       • Semantic theories
         • Reference and sense
           • The relationship by which language hooks onto the world is usually called reference. The semantic links between elements within the vocabulary system is an aspect of their sense, or meaning.
         • Utterances, sentences and propositions
           • Sentences, on the other hand, are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances.
           • propositions are descriptions of states of affairs and which some writers see as a basic element of sentence meaning.
           • an utterance is created by speaking (or writing) a piece of language. If I say Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, this is one utterance.
         • Literal and non-literal meaning
           • On closer examination, though, it proves difficult to draw a firm line between literal and non-literal uses of language. For one thing, one of the ways languages change over time is by speakers shifting the meanings of words to fit new conditions. One such shift is by metaphorical extension, where some new idea is depicted in terms of something more familiar.
         • Semantics and pragmatics
           • sentence meaning and speaker meaning. This suggests that words and sentences have a meaning independently of any particular use, which meaning is then incorporated by a speaker into the particular meaning she wants to convey at any one time. In this view semantics is concerned with sentence meaning and pragmatics with speaker meaning.