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Basic concepts

Meaning, sense, and reference

Semantics studies linguistic meaning, which contrasts with other forms of meaning. For example, religion and spirituality are interested in the meaning of life, which is about the significance of existence or finding a purpose in life. A slightly different sense is the meaning of an action or a policy as the goal it serves. Linguistic meaning, by contrast, refers to how signs are interpreted and the information they contain.[1][2][3][4] It is often expressed in dictionary definitions that give synonymous expressions or paraphrases, for example, when the term ram is defined as an adult male sheep.[5][6]

Linguistic meaning has itself different levels of meaning. Word meaning is studied by lexical semantics and investigates the meaning of individual words. Sentence meanings falls into the field of phrasal semantics and examines the meaning of full sentences while utterance meaning is studied by pragmatics and concerns the meaning of an expression on a particular occasion. The two come apart in cases where expressions are used in a non-literal way, as is often the case with irony. Some theorists further distinguish uttarance meaning as a public phenomenon from speaker meaning, which is a private phenomenon corresponding to what the speaker intended to state.[7][8][9] Word meaning is often related to a concept of a specific kind of entity. For example, the word dog is associated with the concept of a four-legged domestic animal. Sentence meaning by contrast, constitutes a concept of a certain type of situation, as in the sentence "the dog has ruined my blue skirt".[10]


Semantics is primarily interested in public or objective meaning that expressions have rather the private or subjective meaning that specific individuals ascribe associated with expressions. This is usually the meaning found in general dictionary definitions. For example, some people associate the word needle with pain or with drugs but this is not part of the literal meaning studied by semantics.[11]

Meaning is often understood as a concept that encompasses both sense and reference.[12][3][13] Some theorists prefer the terms intension and extension or connotation and denotation.[14]

The reference of an expression is what an expression refers to while sense is the way it refers to that object or how the object is interpreted. For example, the expressions "morning star" and "evening star" refer to the same planet, just like the expressions "2 + 2" and "3 + 1" refer to the same number. The meaning of these expressions differs not on the level of reference but on the level sense.[3]

Identity statements usually express that two expressions with a different sense have the same reference. For example, the sentence "the morning star is the evening star" is informative while the sentence "the morning star is the morning star" is a plain tautology.[15]

Sense is sometimes understood as an intermediate entity that helps people to associate linguistic expressions with the external world. According to this view, the sense of an expression corresponds to the mental phenomena in the form of concepts and ideas associated with this term. Through them, people can identify which objects it refers to. [15][16]

Some semanticists focus only on sense or only on reference in their analysis of meaning.[17][16]

To understand the meaning of an expression, it is usually necessary to understand both to what entities in the world it refers and how it describes them.[18]


Some theorists distinguish reference as the process of pointing to something from denotation as the object to which an expression points.[19]

According to one view, the meaning of an expression is the object it refers to. This view states that the meaning of the word 'bridge' are the physical structures that provide passage over a gap.[17] A different view holds that the meaning of a term are the mental phenomena, like the concepts and ideas associated with this term. [16]

utterance vs sentence vs proposition[20]

Compositionality

Compositionality is a key aspect of how languages construct meaning. It is the idea that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts. For example, it is possible to understand the meaning of the sentence "Zuzana owns a dog" by understanding what the words "Zuzana", "owns", "a" and "dog" mean and how they are combined.[21][22][23] In this regard, sentence meaning is different from word meaning since it is normally not possible to deduce what a word means by looking at its letters and one needs to consult a dictionary instead.[24]

Compositionality is often used to explain how people can formulate and understand an almost infinite number of meanings even though the amount of words and cognitive human resources is finite. For example, many sentences that people read are sentences that they have never seen before and they are nonetheless able to understand them.[21][22][23]

When interpreted in a strict sense, the principle of compositionality states that the meaning of complex expressions is fully determined by the meanings of its parts and the ways they are combined. It is controversial whether this claim is correct or whether additional aspects affect their meaning. For example, context may affect meaning and idiomatic expressions, like red herring, carry meanings that are not directly reducible to the meanings of their individual constituents.[21][22][23]

Truth and truth conditions

Truth is a property of statements that accurately present the world and true statements are in accord with reality. Whether a statement is true does usually depends on the relation between the statement and the rest of the world. The truth conditions of a statement are the way that world needs to be like for the statement to be true. For example, it belongs to the truth conditions of the sentence "it is raining outside" that rain drops are falling from the sky. Whether this sentence is true depends on the situation in which it is used.[25][26][27]

Truth conditions play a central role in meaning and some theories identify the two. To understand a statement usually implies that one has an idea about the conditions under which it would be true. It is possible to understand a sentence by being aware of its truth conditions without knowing whether it is true, i.e., whether the conditions are fulfilled. [25][26][27]

Semiotic triangle

The semiotic triangle, also called the triangle of meaning, is a model used to explain the relation between language, language users, and the world, represented in the model throught as "Symbol", "Thought or Reference", and "Referent". The symbol is the linguistic word or sign, either in their spoken or their written from. The idea underlying the model is that there is no direct relation between linguistic expressions and what they refer to but this relation is mediated through a third component. In this regard, it is a refinement of earlier models diadic models, which analyzed the problem of meaning without this additional component.[28][29][30][31]

The indirect relation is expressed by the dotted line between symbol and referent. For example, the term "apple" stands for a type of fruit but there is no direct connection between this string of letters and the corresponding physical object. Instead, this relation is only established indirectly through the mind of the language user. When they see the symbol, it evokes a mental image or a concept, which establishes the connection to the physical object. This process is only possible if the language user learned the meaning of the symbol before. The meaning of a specific symbol is governed by the conventions of a particular language. The same symbol may refer to one object in one language, to a different object in the second language, and to no object in the third language. [28][29][30][31]


Others

One problem in many disciplines that study language is that language is used at the same time to express their findings. To avoid this potential confusion, semanicists frequently differentiate between object language and metalanguage. The object language is the language that is being investigated and whose meanings are studied. The metalanguage is the language employed to describe the object language. For example, dictionaries use definitions to explain the meaning of terms. In this case, the term belongs to the object language while the definition is part of the metalanguage. [32]


Meaning and use[33]


Sources

  • Dirven, René; Verspoor, Marjolijn (30 June 2004). Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics: Second revised edition. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-9541-5.
  • Palmer, Frank Robert (1976). Semantics: A New Outline. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521209277.
  • Noth, Winfried (22 September 1990). Handbook of Semiotics. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-20959-7.
  • Palmer, Frank Robert (1976). Semantics: A New Outline. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521209277.
  • Kearns, Kate (16 September 2011). Semantics. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-71701-5.
  • Blackburn, Simon (1 January 2008). "Truth Conditions". The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954143-0.
  • Gregory, Howard (2016). Semantics. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415216109.
  • Krifka, Manfred (4 September 2001). Wilson, Robert A.; Keil, Frank C. (eds.). The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS). MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-73144-7.
  • Pelletier, Francis Jeffry (1994). "The Principle of Semantic Compositionality". Topoi. doi:10.1007/BF00763644.
  • Szabó, Zoltán Gendler (2020). "Compositionality". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 7 February 2024.
  • Marti, Genoveva (1998). Sense and Reference. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  • Leach, Stephen; Tartaglia, James (11 May 2018). "Postscript: The Blue Flower". The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-38592-1.
  • Abaza, Jack (16 November 2023). The Definitive Answer to the Meaning of Life. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 979-8-3852-0172-3.
  • Cunningham, D. J. (2009). "Meaning, Sense, and Reference". In Allan, Keith (ed.). Concise Encyclopedia of Semantics. Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-08-095969-6.
  • Yule, George (2017). The Study of Language (6 ed.). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-15299-1.
  • Löbner, Sebastian (2013). Understanding semantics (2 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-82673-0.
  1. ^ Leach & Tartaglia 2018, pp. 274–275.
  2. ^ Abaza 2023, p. 32.
  3. ^ a b c Cunningham 2009, p. 526.
  4. ^ Löbner 2013, pp. 1–2.
  5. ^ Cunningham 2009, pp. 530–531.
  6. ^ Yule 2017, pp. 321–322.
  7. ^ Riemer 2010, pp. 21–22.
  8. ^ Griffiths & Cummins 2023, pp. 5–6.
  9. ^ Löbner 2013, pp. 1–6.
  10. ^ Löbner 2013, pp. 18–21.
  11. ^ Yule 2017, p. 321.
  12. ^ Griffiths & Cummins 2023, pp. 7–9.
  13. ^ Saeed 2009, p. 46.
  14. ^ Cunningham 2009, p. 527.
  15. ^ a b Marti 1998, Lead Section.
  16. ^ a b c Riemer 2010, pp. 27–28.
  17. ^ a b Riemer 2010, pp. 25–26.
  18. ^ Cunningham 2009, p. 531.
  19. ^ Griffiths & Cummins 2023, pp. (7–9)?.
  20. ^ Saeed 2009, pp. 12–13.
  21. ^ a b c Szabó 2020, Lead Section.
  22. ^ a b c Pelletier 1994, p. 11–12.
  23. ^ a b c Krifka 2001, p. 152.
  24. ^ Löbner 2013, pp. 7–8, 10–12.
  25. ^ a b Gregory 2016, pp. 9–10.
  26. ^ a b Blackburn 2008, Truth Conditions.
  27. ^ a b Kearns 2011, pp. 8–10.
  28. ^ a b Palmer 1976, pp. 25–26. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFPalmer1976 (help)
  29. ^ a b Noth 1990, pp. 89–90.
  30. ^ a b Dirven & Verspoor 2004, pp. 28–29.
  31. ^ a b Riemer 2010, pp. 13–16.
  32. ^ Riemer 2010, pp. 22–23.
  33. ^ Riemer 2010, p. 36.
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