Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic
expressions. The language can be a natural language, such as English or Navajo,
or an artificial language, like a computer programming language. Meaning in
natural languages is mainly studied by linguists. In fact, semantics is one of
the main branches of contemporary linguistics.
There are strong connections
to philosophy. Earlier in this century, much work in semantics was done by
philosophers, and some important work is still done by philosophers.
Anyone who speaks a language
has a truly amazing capacity to reason about the meanings of texts. Take, for
instance, the sentence:
“(S) I can't untie that knot with one hand”.
Even though you have
probably never seen this sentence, you can easily see things like the
following:
1. The sentence is about the abilities of whoever spoke or wrote it. (Call this person the speaker.)
2. It's also about a knot, maybe one that the speaker is pointing at.
3. The sentence denies that the speaker has a certain ability. (This is the contribution of the word ‘can't'.)
4. Untying is a way of making something not tied.
5. The sentence doesn't mean that the knot has one hand; it has to do with how many hands are used to do the untying.
The meaning of a sentence is
not just an unordered heap of the meanings of its words. If that were true,
then ‘Cowboys ride horses’ and ‘Horses ride cowboys’ would mean the same thing.
So we need to think about arrangements of meanings.
Sometimes, however, meaning and concept
cannot be so easily differentiated. For instance, the meaning of many
abstract words completely parallels the concept they refer to, as with the word
tradition and the concept "tradition." It is arguable
that one cannot know the meaning of the word "tradition" without
understanding the concept "tradition." Linguists have a second way of looking at the distinction between linguistic and real-world knowledge. They often discuss the difference between a word's sense and its reference. A word's sense is how the word relates to other words in a language (Wittgenstein's "meaning"); it's reference is how it relates to real world concepts. T
The distinction between a word's sense and its reference, or between linguistic meaning and real-world concept--difficult though this distinction may be to draw in many cases--is useful in comparing semantic categories across languages. Languages may divide the same set of real-world concepts in very different ways.
The concept of blood relations offers a good example. Each language has its own set of kinship terms to refer to one's parents' generation (mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles). Discussing kinship terms from the point of view of real world concepts allows comparison across languages without bias in favor of the meaning categories of any particular language.
Every language has a set of basic color terms. But these color terms do not divide the color spectrum in the same place. In other words, the extra-linguistic concept "color" is reflected in each language idiosyncratically. For instance, literary Welsh divides the green/brown part of the spectrum quite differently than English (Welsh as it is used in everyday speech today has conformed to the English divisions of color):
English green ! blue ! grey ! brown
Welsh gwyrdd ! glas (Engl. blue + color of plants) ! llwydd
The linguistic division of concepts is in part arbitrary and idiosyncratic to each language, in part motivated by factors actually present in the real world. Extra-linguistic (real world) factors may result in universal tendencies in how languages divide up concepts. A second look at color terms illustrates this point.
Linguists who study meaning (semanticists) often divide the meaning of a word into semantic components based on real world concepts, such as human/ live/ dead/ animal/ plant/ thing/ etc. Discussing the meaning of words by breaking it down into smaller semantic components such as is called componential analysis.
Noting how semantics is based on extra-linguistic categories, a group of linguists (including the Polish-born Australian linguist Anna Wierzbicka) have tried to reduce all meaning in language to a set of universal core concepts, such as tall, short, male, female, etc. This finite set of concepts are then used universally, to describe the meanings of all words in all languages. This semantic approach to language structure has problems.
The first problem is in deciding which concepts are basic and which are derived. Whatever language is used to label the concepts in the first place biases the semantic analysis in favor of the semantic structure of that lang.
A second problem is the old difficulty of distinguishing between sense and reference. The linguistic boundaries between conceptual features vary across languages. This is especially true with grammatical categories of meaning.
a.) Masculine and feminine in English and Russian.
b.) Animacy in Russian and Polish (objects), and Cherokee (one plural ending from human, another for inanimate, and a different one for plants and animals).
Attempts to reduce meaning in all languages to a limited set of conceptual categories existing outside of language have been unsuccessful.
Third, part of the reason the semantic universalists have been unsuccessful is that meaning is more than simply a reflection of real world categories. Meaning is a linguistic category rather than a real world category reducible to pure logic and perception. The role of semantics in language is often highly idiosyncratic. We have seen that semantic factors often serve as constraints on morphology and syntax. Here are some more examples:
a.) English locative adverbs with toponyms (This is my bed; I sleep here/in it; This is Fairhaven; I live here/*in it) Note the distinction between an idiosyncratic semantic constraint and a logical constraint. Idiosyncratic semantic constraints in the grammar result in reference being made using one form instead of another.
Logical constraints result in reference not being made at all. Compare the illogical sentence: Here is my thoroughness--I sleep *here/*in it. If a sentence is illogical, than all paraphrases are equally illogical. Other examples: the Russian -ovat suffix; the plural of fishes in English.
Thus, meaning is not merely a reference to concepts in the real world. It depends on linguistic factors in part unique to each individual language; meaning depends not only on the logical combination of real world concepts. The system of language cannot be described only in terms of extra-linguistic logic.
How meaning affects word associations in language
The purely linguistic side of meaning is equally evident when examining how words combine with one another to produce phrases. The set of restrictions on how a word may combine with other words of a single syntactic category is referred to as the word's collocability. Two words may have the same referent, and yet differ in their ability to combine with particular words.
In English, the word flock collocates with sheep ; and school with fish, although both flock and school mean group.
Also, addled combines only with brains or eggs (one must steam rice and boil water), blond collocates with hair, while red may collocate with hair as well as other objects.
Idiosyncratic restrictions on the collocability of words (and by idiosyncratic here I mean that part of meaning which is peculiar to language structure and not deriving purely from logic) result in set phrases: green with jealousy; white table vs. white lie. On can get or grow old, but only get drunk, get ready, not *grow drunk, *grow ready.
Every language has its own peculiar stock of set phrases. In English we face problems and interpret dreams, but in modern Hebrew we stand in front of problems and solve dreams. In English we drink water but eat soup. In Japanese the verb for drink collocates not only with water and soup, but also with tablets and cigarettes.
From the point of view of etymology, set phrases are of two types.
1.) The first type of set phrase, the collocation, may be defined as "a set phrase which still makes sense": make noise, make haste. One simply doesn't say to produce noise or make swiftness, even though such phrases would be perfectly understandable. Since collocations still may be taken literally, they can be paraphrased using regular syntactic transformations: Haste was made by me, noise was made by the children.
2.) Phrases whose words no longer make sense when taken literally are called idioms. The semantic relations between words in idiomatic set phrases may be illogical to varying degrees: white elephant sale, soap opera, to see red, break a leg, small voice, loud tie, wee hours of the night.
Also, true idioms cannot be paraphrased by regular means, because they do not participate in the regular syntactic relations of the language: John kicked the table--The table was kicked by John. vs. John kicked the bucket. A bearded sailor walked by.-- A sailor who was bearded passed by. vs. An occasional sailor walked by.
Thus, meaning involves real-world concepts and logic but it is at the same time a linguistic category. The semantic structure of a language is the language's special system of conveying extra linguistic relations by idiosyncratic linguistic means. Semantic relationships between words
Modern studies of semantics are interested in meaning primarily in terms of word and sentence relationships. Let's examine some semantic relationships between words:
Synonyms are words with similar meanings. They are listed in a special type of dictionary called a thesaurus. A regular dictionary lists words according to form, usually in alphabetical order; a thesaurus lists words according to meaning. Synonyms usually differ in at least one semantic feature. Sometimes the feature is objective (denotative), referring to some actual, real world difference in the referents: walk, lumber, stroll, meander, lurch, stagger, stride, mince. Sometimes the feature is subjective (connotative), referring to how the speaker feels about the referent rather than any real difference in the referent itself: die, pass away, give up the ghost, kick the bucket, croak. There tend to be very few absolute synonyms in a language. Example: sofa and couch are nearly complete synonyms, yet they differ in their collocability in at least one way: one may say couch potato, but not *sofa potato.
One type of synonym is called a paronym. Paronyms are words with associated meanings which also have great similarities in form: proscribe/ prescribe, industrial/ industrious, except/accept, affect/effect. Many errors in speech and writing are due to mixups involving paronyms.
Antonyms are words that have the opposite meaning. Oppositeness is a logical category. There are three types:
Complementary pairs are antonyms in which the presence of one quality or state signifies the absence of the other and vice versa. single/ married, not pregnant/pregnant There are no intermediate states.
Gradable pairs are antonyms which allow for a gradual transition between two poles, the possibility of making a comparison--a little/a lot good/bad, hot/ cold cf. the complementary pair: pregnant/not pregnant
Relational opposites are antonyms which share the same semantic features, only the focus, or direction, is reversed: tie/untie, buy/sell, give/receive, teacher/pupil, father/son.
Some concepts lack logical opposites that can be described in terms of any special word; colors are a good example: the logical opposite of red is not red. Such concepts may form relational antonyms, however, through symbolic systems of thinking. For instance, in Cold War thinking, the relational opposite of American is Russian; in current US politics, the relational opposite of Democrat is Republican.
Homonyms are words that have the same form but different meanings. There are two major types of homonyms, based upon whether the meanings of the word are historically connected or result from coincidence.
Coincidental homonyms are the result of such historical accidents as phonetic convergence of two formerly different forms or the borrowing of a new word which happens to be identical to an old word. There is usually no natural link between the two meanings: the bill of a bird vs the bill one has to pay; or the bark of a dog vs the bark of a tree.
