Semantics

CONCEPTIONS OF
MEANING
 Meaning: words  things
Traditional concept since Plato

Chair

Car

Desk
 Meaning: words  concepts 
things
Thought

Symbol Referent
Ogden and Richards, 1923

Denies a direct link between words and things, arguing that

the relationship can be made only through the use of our
minds. For every word, there is an associated concept. This
approach was criticized due to the difficulty to identify
“concepts” for some words.
 Desk
"a piece of furniture a flat top and four legs, at
which one reads and writes"
 Stimuli  words  responses
Leonard Bloomfield’s view (1933) is that something can be deduced
solely from a study of the situation in which speech is used:

S - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> r . . . . . . . . . . . . s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> R
The stimulus Leads Speech (s) The response
(S) someone to (R)
speak is the result
(r) of (s)
 Traditional vs. Modern Linguistics
Words “have Meaning is studied
meaning”, we can by making detailed
examine the analyses of the way
meaning of words are used in
individual words specific contexts.
and sentences, but
there is no meaning
beyond that
“The meaning of a word is
its use in the language”
Ludwing Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
G. Leech in a more moderate tone recognizes 7 types of
meaning his Semantics (p. 23), first published in 1974, as
follows:

• Conceptual meaning: Logical, cognitive, or denotative

content (what the words refers to)

• Connotative meaning: What is communicated by virtue of

what language refers to.

• Social meaning: What is communicated of the social,

circumstances of language use.
• Reflected meaning: What is communicated through
association with another sense of the same expression.

• Collocative meaning: What is communicated through

association with words which tend to occur in the
environment of another word.

• Thematic meaning: What is communicated by the way in

which the message is organized in terms of order and
emphasis.

• Affective meaning: What is communicated of the feelings

and attitudes of the speaker/writer.
 Sense vs. Reference
Connotation denotation

Refers to the abstract properties concrete entities

of an entity

Sense = concept

"a piece of furniture with a flat

top and four legs, at which one
reads and writes"
 The referential theory
The idea is that linguistic expressions have the
meanings they do because they stand for things;
what they mean is what they stand for. On this
view, words are like labels; they are symbols
that represent, designate, name, denote or refer
to items in the world: the name “Adolf Hitler”
denotes (the person) Hitler.
 Objections to the theory
• Objection 1: Not every word does name or
denote any actual object.

First, there are the “names” of nonexistent

items like Pegasus or the Easter Bunny.
“Pegasus” does not denote anything, because
there is in reality no winged horse for it to
denote.
• Objection 2: According to the Referential
theory, a sentence is a list of names. But a
mere list of names does not say anything.

Fred Martha Irving Phyllis

• Objection 3: There are specific linguistic
phenomena that seem to show that there is
more to meaning than reference. In
particular, coreferring terms are often not
synonymous; that is, two terms can share
their referent but differ in meaning -- “John
Paul” and “the Pope,” for example.
 Sense vs. Reference
To some extent, we can say every word has a sense, i.e. some
conceptual content, otherwise we will not be able to use it or
understand it. But not every word has a reference.
Grammatical words like but, if, and do not refer to anything.
And words like God, ghost and dragon refer to imaginary
things, which do not exist in reality.

It is not convenient to explain the meaning of a word in terms

of the thing it refers to. The thing a word stands for may not
always be at hand at the time of speaking. Even when it is
nearby, it may take the listener some time to work out its
main features. For example, chair:
Should we study meaning in terms of
“sense” or “reference”?
 Semantic Space

C. E. Osgood, G. Suci, 7 P. Tannenbaum, The

measurement of Meaning (1957). Studied
“affective” meaning – the emotional reactions
attached to a word through a game called “20
questions”
 “20 questions”
Locate the concept “polite” in one point in the scale:
Weak 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strong
Rough 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Smooth
Active 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Passive
Small 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Large
Cold 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Hot
Good 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Bad
Tense 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Relaxed
Wet 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dry
 “20 questions”
Locate the concept “MAN” in one point in the scale:
Weak 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strong
Rough 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Smooth
Active 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Passive
Good 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bad
Tense 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Relaxed
Fast 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Slow
 Semantic Structure:
Words or Lexemes?
Walk, walks, walking, walked
These four “words” are variants of the same “word”

These four words are variants of the “lexeme” WALK

 Semantic Structure:
Words or Lexemes?
The term “word” is useless for the study of
idioms. One idiom is a unit of meaning:

Kick the bucket = “die” (it has ONE single unit of

meaning)

“kick the bucket” (this lexeme contains three

words)
 Semantic fields
(A way to impose some order to vocabulary)
Vocabulary is usually organized into “fields” of
meaning. Within each field, lexemes interrelate
and define each other in specific ways:
House

Basement Ground floor First floor

Laundry Garage kitchen bedrooms

 Practice
Organize these words in semantic fields, add
more if necessary:

Living – vegetable – animal – human – tree –

plant – flower – bird – fish – animal – insect