Semantics

Semantics

Variety of Meaning

Semantics is the study of meaning. The first problem that we face while trying to study meaning is that it is hard to define precisely what meaning means. The term can be defined in many different ways. Therefore, it is important to differentiate between different types of meaning.

1. Denotational theory of Meaning – According to the denotational theory, the meaning of a linguistic expression is the object that it refers to or denotes. For example, the meaning of ‘horse’ is a four legged animal of a certain type and the meaning of ‘table’ is a particular item of furniture. This theory implies that all expressions have a denotation and if the denotation of two expressions is the same, their meaning must be the same.

The problems with this theory are that

 i. All expressions do not have a denotation. There are some expressions like hello, and, empty, very, the etc. which do not refer to any object. So they have no denotation.

 ii. There may be some expressions that have the same denotation but not the same meaning. The expressions ‘the morning star’ the evening star, and ‘Venus’ have the same denotation as they refer to the same object, the planet Venus, but their meaning is different.

Menatalist Theory of Meaning

According to the mentalist theory of meaning, meaning refers to the feelings. Images, ideas, concepts, thoughts and inferences that the speaker transfers to the hearer. But it is not possible to define ideas precisely. The idea that the speaker seeks to transfer may be different from what the listener receives. It is also not clear whether two expressions could be synonymous if this view is accepted or different expressions would always have different meanings.

If ideas are interpreted as the images that an expression arouses in the mind, again it is hard to define ideas precisely. A word may arouse different images in the minds of different people. What image will the expression ‘dog’ arouse? What will be the breed, size, and look of the dog? What image of a triangle will the listener think of by hearing that word- equilateral or isosceles? Then, there are expressions like only, and, hello, not etc. which are not associated with any image.

If ideas are interpreted as concepts, they may be too speaker specific i.e. different speakers may have a different type of concept in mind while using the same expression. If somebody says ‘bird’, the listener is more likely to think of a sparrow than a penguin. Similarly, the word ‘furniture’ is more likely to give rise to the concept of a chair or table than that of any other piece of furniture.

Ideas are too subjective and fleeting to be the meaning of a word whereas meaning has to be objective and stable.

Sense Theory of Meaning

Frege has asserted that the meaning of an expression is the sense that is sought to be communicated. The sense is the denotation in the mind of the speaker. He said that whole sentences have a sense. The sense of a declarative sentence is the truth condition that the world must satisfy for the sentence to be true. It is however immaterial whether the truth condition is actually fulfilled or not. The meaning of an interrogative sentence is the answerhood condition and understanding it means knowing what answer it demands. The meaning of an imperative sentence is the compliance condition and understanding it means understanding what action is required to comply with the request or command. Truth condition, answerhood condition and compliance condition are collectively called satisfaction conditions. According to him, the meaning of a sentence is its sense or satisfaction condition.

The Use Theory of Meaning

According to this theory, the meaning of an expression is its use in the language community. It means that an expression communicates the meaning that the language community associates with it.

Linguistic Meaning

The linguistic meaning of an expression is the meaning of that expression in the language to which nit belongs. It is the sum total of the literal meaning of the words constituting the expression and the syntactical and grammatical meaning which depends on the way the words are arranged in that expression. The words are interpreted as having the meaning given in the dictionary.

We have to note here that the literal meaning of an utterance is not always the same. It may vary from dialect to dialect or from individual to individual. For example, in American English, the word bonnet refers to a type of hat but in British English it refers to the hood of a car. Similarly, what is ground floor in British English is first floor in American English. The Punjabi word BUDDHI means an old woman in the Malwa dialect but in the Majha dialect, it is used for a woman of any age, even a teenage girl. In the same way, one speaker may use the word ‘infer’ in the sense of ‘conclude or draw out the implied meaning’ as in “I infer from what you say that you are not attending his marriage.” Another speaker may use it in the sense of include an unstated meaning in an utterance as in “He inferred that he was fed up with us.”

Utterance Meaning or Speaker Meaning

Utterance meaning is also known as speaker meaning, intended meaning, or expressive meaning.

It is the meaning which the speaker intends to communicate through an utterance. It may or may not be the same as the linguistic meaning. The speaker may be speaking ironically. His intended meaning then will be exactly the opposite of the linguistic meaning. We may say that the performance was very good while we actually mean that it was very bad.

Similarly, we may speak metaphorically rather than literally. Our intention may be to say that something or somebody shares a quality or trait with something or somebody else by comparing the two without naming the trait or quality. For example, we may say that somebody is an ass. It does not mean that he is a four legged dull witted beast of burden. We may actually be saying that he is as dull witted as an ass.

Meaningfulness and Meaninglessness

The most important property of words and other linguistic expressions is their meaningfulness or meaninglessness. A word or utterance serves as communication only if it is meaningful. The word Bachelor means an unmarried male. Mother means female parent. But if we say of somebody that he is a married bachelor, the utterance will be meaningless because the words bachelor and married are not compatible. Similarly, the expression ‘male mother’ would be meaningless due to the incompatibility of the two words. However, a speaker may have some intended meaning even while using such meaningless expressions or the listener may impose a meaning on them. The male mother may be used to refer to a male who has been performing all the duties of a mother towards a child.

Normally, we expect any linguistic expression to be meaningful. Anybody using meaningless language would be looked upon as a crank.

Synonymy

Synonymy means the sameness of meaning. There are some words in every language which have the same meaning.  Two lexemes (words) can be said to be completely synonymous if and only if they have the same descriptive, expressive and social meaning in the contexts being considered. They are said to be absolutely synonymous if and only if they have the same distribution and are completely synonymous in all their meanings and in all their contexts of occurrence. It is a matter of common observation that complete synonymy as described here is very rare and absolute synonymy is almost non-existent. It is restricted to highly specialised vocabulary that is descriptive. Even where it is found, one of the terms becomes the standard term in course of time and the other either disappears or takes on a new meaning.

Homophony

Homophony means the sameness of pronunciation. When two words have the same pronunciation, they are said to be homophonous. Words which are homonymous are homophonous as well. Bank (a financial institution) and bank (side of a river or canal) are homophones as well as homonyms. But it is not necessary for homophonous words to have the same spelling too. Right, rite and write are homophones in spite of the difference in spelling.

Homography

Homography refers to the phenomenon of two or more words having the same spelling. Homographs are different words with meanings distinct from one another. Because they are different words with different meanings which are completely unrelated, they are listed separately in the dictionary.

Homonymy

Homonymy refers to the phenomenon of two or more words having the same spelling as well pronunciation. But they are different in meaning and their meanings are not related to one another in any way. Bank (a financial institution), bank (the side of a river or canal) and bank (depend) are homonyms. They have different meanings and the meanings are not related in any way. Homonyms are homographs as well as homophones. Since words have more than one forms, it is not uncommon for words to share one or more, but not all of their forms. And it is also not necessary for the shared forms to be citation forms or base forms.

Polysemy

Polysemy is a property of single lexemes. It refers to the fact of the same words having different but related meanings. The word ‘neck’ has several meanings: i. Part of the body ii. Part of a shirt iii. Part of a bottle, iv. Narrow strip of land. Therefore it is polysemous. The chief consideration here is the relatedness of meaning. All these meanings of neck are related in some way. Polysemous words are not listed separately in a dictionary. All their meanings are given under the same lexical entry. In other words, they are not treated as different words.

Ambiguity 

Ambiguity means the possibility of an expression being interpreted in two or more ways. When this happens, the listener feels uncertain about how to interpret the expression. Therefore, it may lead to misunderstanding or miscommunication. Look at the following two sentences:

The mouse fell down from the able.

The brother of Ram and Mohan visited me today.

The first sentence can convey two meanings because the word ‘mouse’ may be taken to refer to a rodent or a device for moving the cursor on the screen of a computer.

Similarly, the second sentence can be interpreted in two ways. It may mean that one person who is the brother of both Ram and Mohan visited me. Alternatively, it can mean that two persons visited me one of whom was the brother of Ram and the other was Mohan.

So we see that there are two things that can make a linguistic expression ambiguous.

1. The first is the use of an ambiguous word. It may be possible to assign two meanings to a word used in the expression as in the case of the first sentence. This kind of ambiguity is called word-based or lexical ambiguity. The following sentence is another example of lexical ambiguity.

I saw a bat in the room.

The word bat may refer to a nocturnal creature or it may refer to a cricket or baseball bat. Hence it is not clear what the speaker saw in the room. 

2. The second factor is the use of a structure that can be analysed and interpreted in two ways. It is called structural ambiguity. The second sentence given above is an example of structural ambiguity. The sentence given below is another example of structural ambiguity.

Flying planes can be dangerous.

 Here, we can analyse ‘flying planes’ in two ways. We may say that the noun planes is the subject which has been pre-modified by the present participle ‘flying’. If the sentence is interpreted like that, it means that planes which fly can be dangerous. Alternatively, we can say that Flying is a gerund and it forms the subject. But it has been post-modified by planes.  So the meaning of the sentence is that the act of flying planes can be dangerous.

Most of the time, ambiguity can be removed by the context. In a given context, only one interpretation is possible. But when the context does not help, it is really hard to decide how to interpret such utterances.

Anomalous Utterances

Anomaly is a property not of lexemes but of larger structures like phrases and sentences. It results from putting together words which are not compatible. A phrase is anomalous if it combines words that do not go well with each other. The word plummet means to fall suddenly and quickly. And gradually means slowly. If we say that the mercury plummeted gradually, we are using an anomalous expression. Similarly, the phrase colourless green ideas is anomalous first because ideas do not have a colour. So they cannot be green. Secondly, if they are colourless, they cannot be green and if they are green, they cannot be colourless.

Meaning Inclusion and Redundancy

Sometimes, one word may include the meaning of another and therefore it may be out of place to use the two words together. For example, sister is a word that includes the meaning of being female. We cannot have a male sister. Therefore the use of the word female in the expression ‘female sister’ is superfluous or redundant. Similarly, the use of the word dead in the sentence ‘He killed the lion dead.’ is a case of redundancy because if he has killed the lion, the lion must be dead.

Semantic Field

A semantic field is an area of discussion in which the use of many different words can be possible and any of them can be used according to the sense we want to communicate. These words are not synonymous but they are somehow related in meaning because they belong to the same area of experience. For example, the words green, yellow, red, white, crimson are all related to colours. Similarly, boil, fry, bake and steam all belong to the field of cooking. It is frequently the case that many words are available for use while talking of a certain domain (area or field) of human experience and we can choose the one most suitable to the meaning we want to convey.

Sentence Meaning and Utterance Meaning

We have to draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning. Some linguists are of the opinion that sentence meaning falls within the scope of semantics whereas the investigation of utterance meaning is a part of pragmatics.

It is a matter of general agreement that sentences are abstract entities. They are not bound to any particular time and place. They are just units of the language system to which they belong. Sentence meaning is therefore context independent. An utterance on the other hand is always used in a context. Therefore its meaning is context dependent. It cannot be understood without reference to the context in which the utterance is used.

However, the term utterance is ambiguous. It may be interpreted as 1 - the language behaviour of a speaker to achieve a certain purpose or 2 - as the product of that behaviour i.e. the words that he actually utters. In the second sense, it is often referred to as sentence. If we use it in this sense, it cannot be independent of the context. But it can also be repeated at a different time and in a different place. Context dependence of an utterance therefore does mean spatio-temporal uniqueness. It does not mean that the expression cannot be used in a different place or at a different time. Abstractness or context independence therefore is not complete.

Utterances are very often incomplete or elliptical sentences. If so, their meaning cannot at all be understood without reference to the context in which they are used. 

Utterance meaning is the product of sentence meaning and context. Utterance meaning therefore is normally richer than the meaning of the sentence from which it is derived.

Moreover, speakers of a language are not aware of the concept of sentence as a decontextualized, abstract unit of the language system. They are familiar only with actual utterances which they use and have no idea of potential utterances called sentences by linguists who use them to collect data for linguistic research. So only linguists can draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning by taking away from utterances all that belongs their non-sentential part – the context of their use, the beliefs and attitudes of particular speakers, reference to particular entities, conventions of politeness used by particular groups etc.

Different types of sentences like declarative, interrogative, imperative etc. are used for particular purposes which are known as their characteristic uses. But a speaker may sometimes use a sentence in a non-characteristic way. He may sometimes use a declarative sentence to get an action performed. For example, he may sometimes say –

It is cold in here.

when he actually wants to say - Close the window or Let us move out into the sun.

Similarly, he may use a question – Can you tell me the time? – to request somebody to tell him the time.

The addressee interprets the utterance in the light of the relevant contextual factors and draws his own conclusions which may be uncharacteristic.

However, the utterance meaning is always related to the inherent or characteristic meaning of a sentence which is the product of its lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. It is not necessary, however, for the addressee always to perform a step by step analysis of a sentence to arrive at its utterance meaning. Most of these non-characteristic uses have become conventionalised and are understood by the addressees without much effort. All the same, we have to draw a distinction between the inherent meaning and the intended meaning of an utterance.

But it is also true that a speaker cannot frequently use a sentence to communicate a meaning which is not related to its inherent meaning unless there has been a prior understanding between him and the addressee.

We must also understand the difference between reference and deixis. Reference, like denotation, is a relation which exists between linguistic expressions on one hand and the entities, properties or situations in the real world on the other. But reference is bound to the context of utterance whereas denotation is not. The same expression may refer to different entities at different times. For example, the expressions ‘that man’ or ‘this book’ always has the same denotative meaning but they may refer to a different man or book at different times and in different situations. The meaning of most of the referring expressions is context dependent.

The potential reference is determined by the inherent meaning of expressions, contextual factors like the shared assumptions of the speaker and the addressee, and also by the grammatical rules and stylistic tendencies or conventions.

Grammatical rules and stylistic conventions are particularly important in determining co-reference (reference to the same entity) of different expressions. For example, there is a grammatical rule which says that in coordinated clauses, a pronoun can co-refer to the referent of a noun only if the noun has already occurred. But in a subordinate clause of a complex sentence, we may use a pronoun to co-refer to the referent of a noun even if the noun occurs after the pronoun. Therefore, in the sentences

My friend missed the train and he has just arrived.

And

Since he missed the train, my friend has just arrived.

The pronoun ‘he’ is co-referential with ‘my friend’ i.e. they refer to the same person. But in the sentence

He missed the train and my friend has just arrived.

‘my friend’ and ‘he  need not be co-referential because in coordinated clauses, we cannot use a pronoun to co-refer to the referent of a noun if the noun has not occurred earlier in the sentence.

Now let us have a look at stylish conventions. The sentence

John loves John

is acceptable grammatically. But there is a convention that the second occurrence of the noun should be avoided and we should replace it with a reflexive pronoun if the subject is the same person as the object and say

John loves himself.

Deixis is like reference as it also relates utterances to their context. It is both broader and narrower than reference. Reference may or may not be deictic. On the other hand deixis does not necessarily involve reference.

The term deixis has been derived from a Greek word which means to point out or show. So deixis determines the structure and interpretation of utterances in relation to

1. The time and place of their occurrence

2. The identity of the speaker and the addressee and

3. The objects and events in the actual situation of utterance.

For example, the referent of ‘that man over there’ cannot be identified without knowing the time of the utterance and the place where the speaker is at the time of making it.

Similarly, the referents of ‘I’ and ‘you’ cannot be identified without knowing who is speaking and to whom he is speaking. The demonstrative pronouns – this, that, these, those – and sometimes the definite article ‘the’, and adverbs of time like now, then, hereafter, later and of place like here and there are deictic expressions the meaning of which cannot be determined without knowing the time and place of the utterance in which they are used. The use of tense is also determined in relation to the time of utterance.

Semantics and Grammar

Or

The Role of Grammar in Meaning

There are two factors which determine the meaning of sentences – the lexemes (words) used in them and the grammatical rules. The part of meaning that can be attributed to the words (lexemes) is called the lexical meaning and the part of meaning that can be attributed to the grammatical rules is known as the grammatical meaning.

The two following sentences differ in their descriptive meaning as they describe two different situations. But the difference is attributed to two different lexemes – man in the first and dog in the second. The difference of meaning is lexical.

The dog bit the man.        

The dog bit the cat. 

But the difference in the meaning of “The dog bit the man.” and, “The man bit the dog.” cannot be attributed to the difference of words (lexemes) because all the words in the two sentences are the same. It is due to the different syntactic ordering of the words and the role attributed to the two nouns by the grammatical rules of English. In the first sentence, ‘The dog’ is the subject and ‘the man’ is the object. In the second sentence, their grammatical role is reversed. 

The sentences ‘The dog bit the postman.’ and ‘Did the dog bite the postman?’ also differ in meaning. But the difference in their meaning is not descriptive. It is expressive and grammatical. The initial placing of the auxiliary has changed the expressive or intended meaning in the second sentence. The first sentence is a declarative sentence or a statement where the intention is to give information. The second one is an interrogative sentence or a question of the yes /no type where the intention is to ask for information.

There are many other grammatical differences which correlate with differences of non-descriptive meaning.

Word order serves an expressive function in many languages. The selection of mood (indicative, subjunctive, exclamatory, optative etc.) is another grammatical factor that can change the expressive meaning.

Grammar can also change the social meaning of sentences. In many languages such as Punjabi and Hindi, the use of the second person plural instead of singular indicates respect for the addressee. In English, the use of the third person for the speaker signals conceit, ego or pride and is used for bragging. An example is the bragging of Caesar where he says that Caesar does not fear fear. Similarly, a man having the name John may say, “John is not afraid of death. He courts death to achieve honour.” The use of the royal first person plural is another case in point where the use of the plural pronoun rather than the singular signals the authority of the king or the queen. Queen Victoria’s famous words, “We are not amused.” is a very good example of the royal first person plural.

The conclusion is that the difference between lexical and grammatical meaning does not coincide with descriptive and non-descriptive meaning. We cannot say that lexical meaning is descriptive and grammatical meaning is non-descriptive.

The distinction between lexemes and grammar is not as clear as it appears to be. In every language, there are two categories of words – full words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) also known as lexical or content words – and function words (articles, prepositions, conjunctions etc.) also known as grammatical words. The latter carry very little meaning. In a structure where they cannot but occur, they have no meaning at all as in ‘three kilos of butter’. Moreover, in some languages, the meaning expressed by the function words is expressed through inflection. For example, in Punjabi, instead of saying ‘bazar ton’ (from the bazar), we can say ‘bazaron’.

What is lexicalised in one language may be grammaticalised in another. The same semantic distinction may be expressed lexically or grammatically. For example, English has two verbs – die and kill - which differ not only in meaning but also in valency (the words required to follow them). But some languages have only one verb and the meaning expressed by ‘kill’ is expressed by the causative form of the same word which means ‘cause to die’. For example, Punjabi uses ‘marna’ for ‘die and ‘maarna’ for ‘kill’. Again the distinction communicated by the category of tense (past, present and future) is communicated lexically by using words like ‘in the past’ or ‘now etc. in some languages without the category of tense.

We have seen that the meaning of lexemes is indeterminate. But the meaning of such grammatical categories as causativity, tense, mood etc. is even more indeterminate (difficult to determine). It is very difficult to decide whether a lexical distinction in one language is the exact equivalent of a grammatical distinction in another. The causative Punjabi verb ‘maarna’ may not have exactly the same meaning as the English verb kill just as the English verb ‘kill’ and the lexically complex expression ‘cause to die’ do not have exactly the same meaning.

We have to admit that the nature of the correlation between grammatical structure and semantic structure is difficult to express precisely. The more deeply we study a language, the more complex this relationship appears to be. Almost all the grammatical labels used in well studied European languages are misleadingly precise. Let us take the example of tense in English. The meaning of tenses, which is the easiest grammatical category to define, is not possible to explain satisfactorily. Although the three tenses – past, present and future – are said to refer to time, tense and time are two different concepts in the ultimate analysis. The past tense does not always refer to past events. The word ‘were’ in the sentence “I wish I were rich” refers to the present time and not to the past. Similarly, the present tense in the conditional and temporal subordinate clauses following the main clause in the future tense refers to the future time rather than the present as is clear from the following sentences:

You will pass the examination if you work hard.

We shall start as soon as John arrives.

Another point to remember is that meaningfulness and grammaticality need not always go together. A sentence may be ungrammatical and yet meaningful. The following sentence is syntactically correct although it is obviously ungrammatical so far as gender agreement is concerned:

She has pain in his stomach.

But it may be justified semantically if the speaker knows that the actor playing the role of his sister on the stage is a boy and not a girl. In fact, English does not have the category of gender. The distinction of gender in English is based on the sex of the adult human being. Even here, it is not the real life sex but the perception of the sex of the referent by the speaker that counts. One may use a feminine pronoun for a man if one mistakes him for a woman. So we see that syntactic correctness, grammatical correctness and contextual appropriateness are three different things. Even an obviously ungrammatical sentence may be contextually appropriate. And even an obviously ungrammatical and contextually inappropriate sentence may be syntactically well-formed as the following sentence is:

He has a pain in her stomach.

Even here, we may say that the inconsistency is due to the carelessness or change of mind of the speaker and in spite of the gender disagreement, it may not be altogether impossible to interpret its meaning in a certain situation where the speaker knows that the referent has changed his sex.

But a sentence may be totally meaningless and yet syntactically well-formed as this one used by Chomsky:

Colourful green ideas sleep furiously.

Let us now come to collocations. A collocation (a group of words habitually used together) may be anomalous not because of the difference in the meaning of a word but due to some other reason like convention. Even if a boy or girl and a horse have the same colour of hair, we cannot say ‘a bay(haired) boy or girl and a blond(haired) horse although both the words denote the same colour. There is a large number of lexemes in all languages whose meaning cannot be considered to be totally independent of the collocations in which they are used.

Another problem is that of drawing a boundary between linguistic and non-linguistic determinants of grammaticality. Sentences may be judged to be unacceptable grammatically without being able to decide whether they are ungrammatical due to linguistic reasons or due to non-linguistic ones. Thus the sentence

The president of the country has elapsed

would be unacceptable due to the valency of the verb elapse. It can co-occur only with durations of time and not with persons or other living beings. All the same, one can understand what the speaker wants to convey.

Due to the same reason, the sentence

Three presidents have elapsed but nothing has changed

would be judged to be unacceptable. But it is easier to interpret than the earlier sentence because ‘three presidents’ can easily be interpreted as ‘three presidencies’ because of our understanding of the valency of elapse.

We may conclude by saying that although the meaning of a sentence is the product of both lexical and grammatical meaning, the boundary between the two is not always easy to draw. It is also obvious that the distinction between the meaningfulness and grammaticality of sentences is far from sharp and clear.