1. HXE 302 -
SEMANTICS
Lecture 1

3. Introduction: what is semantics?
• Semantics is the study of meaning
communicated through language (Saeed,
2003).
• Semantics is the study of the linguistic
meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and
sentences (Fromkin et al, 2006).
• Meaning is manifested in the systematic link
between linguistic forms and things that we
want to talk about or communicate.

4. Introduction
• Language allows us to talk about the world, to
convey information to one another about ourselves
and our surroundings in a reliable fashion.
• Let us consider this example:
- This is red.
• Interpreting the example above is impossible unless
the interpreter has access to some contextually
salient entity to which this refers, say a pen lying
on the table.
• Language also enables us to communicate about
more private internal worlds, to share our mental
states, attitudes, hopes, fears, etc.
• Compare: The door is closed. John wants to eat a
tuna sandwich.

5. We may distinguish different linguistic
fields according to:
• Phonetics - sounds
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics -
meaning
• Pragmatics
• The physical side of
linguistic utterances
– the articulation
and perception of
speech sounds
• The meaning
expressed by
elements of a
language,
characterizable as a
symbolic system

6. What is meaning?
• What makes words meaningful is that they are
about the things in the world, what makes them
meaningful is their relation to the things in the
world. But meanings, the entities that semantics
investigates, cannot be directly observed.
• The mystery of meaning is that it does not seem to
be located in any single place –
- Not in the word (a noise or a scribble)
- Not in the objects that are described by the words
- Not in the mind (in a separate concept or idea
hovering between the word and the things we are
talking about)

7. • Meanings are not located somehow in the physical
shape of words:
- There are no physical features that all true
utterances have in common.
- Words do not have meanings because of their sound
or look except onomatopoeic words (ex cuckoo,
buzz, etc)
- Not only do languages vary in their vocabularies,
but also within one language the relation between
words and what they stand for changes (ex. gay)
- One of the defining properties of human language is
“the ARBITRARINESS of the linguistic sign”
(Ferdinand de Saussure, 1916): the connection
between a word and what it stands for is
ARBITRARY

8. Semantics and semiotics
• Linguistic meaning is a special subset of the more
general human ability to use signs, e.g.:
- Those vultures mean there’s a dead animal up
ahead.
- His high temperature may mean he has virus.
- The red flag means it’s dangerous to swim.
- Those stripes on his uniform mean he is a sergeant.
- To mean here two meanings: cause-effect vs.
arbitrary symbols used in public signs
• In general, to mean reflects the all-pervasive habit
of identifying and creating signs: of making one
thing stand for another.

9. What is meaning?
• What is the relationship between the use
of the word ‘mean’ in:
a. Smoke means fire.
b. That road sign means there are road works
ahead.
c. ‘Bachelor’ means unmarried man.
d. Love means never having to say you are
sorry.
e. The fact that door to the room was open
means the butler did it.

10. The meaning of words
• Every word has some meaning (some only
in context).
• What is a meaning of a word?
a. Dictionary definition
b. Mental image
c. Reference
d. Parallel worlds
Knowing the meaning of words is not
enough to understand the meaning of a
sentence.

11. • The process of creating and interpreting
symbols, sometimes called signification, is
far wider than language.
• Saussure (1974) stressed that the study of
linguistic meaning is part of this general
study of the use of sign system and this
general study is called semiotics.
• Semioticians investigate the types of
relationship that may hold between a sign
and the objects it represents or in the
Saussure’s terminology, between a signifier
and its signified

12. • One basic distinction (acc. to Perice) is
between icon, index and symbol.
• An icon is where there is a similarity
between a sign and what it represents, i.e,
between a portrait and its real-life object
• An index is where the sign is closely
associated with its signified, often in a
causal relationship; thus smoke is an index
of fire
• A symbol is where there is only a
conventional link between the sign and its
signified; the way that mourning is
symbolised by wearing of black clothes in
some cultures

13. Different dimensions of meaning
• Reference vs sense
- Meaning as reference: the meaning of words are
derived from the way they describe the world.
Linguistic expressions are linked in virtue of their
meaning to parts of the world
- Denotation of an expression – the part of reality the
expression is linked to; the set of things a word
applies to
- Extension of a word – the class denoted by the word
- Reference or referent – the entity to which the
expression refers

14. - Problems with referential approach:
expressions that have no extension (do not
refer to anything in the world) but still have
meaning: ex. unicorn, the present king of
France, Santa Claus) or abstract words –
justice, knowledge
- There is more to meaning than reference.
- Ex. a) Shakespeare b) the author of Hamlet.
- a) and b) may refer to the same person but
they have different meanings

15. Denotation and reference
• We use language to talk about the
world.
• We can use words to refer to things.
• Pat went to Summerville.
• We say that Pat denotes the person
Pat, Somerville denotes the city
Somerville. A connection between
words and the world.

16. Sense and reference
• Sense – the way the speaker thinks about
the object; the guise under which the object
is known to the speaker; mode of
presentation; idea in the mind; sense is
speaker-relative.
• Acc. to Frege: sense and reference are two
different aspects of meaning of at least
some kinds of terms. A term’s reference is
the object it refers to and its sense is the
way in which it refers to that object

17. Sense and Reference
• An innovation of the German
philosopher and mathematician G.
Frege in his 1892 paper (On Sense and
Reference)
• According to Frege, sense and
reference are 2 different aspects of
the meaning of at least some kinds of
linguistic expressions.
• Frege divided meaning into sense
(intension) and reference (extension).

18. Sense and reference
• Reference relates words to entities in
the world.
• Sense relates words to each other
within the language.
• Sense is what you grasp when you
understand a word
• Sense of chair is ‘seat with four legs
and a back’
• Sense of aunt is ‘parent’s sister’

19. • Literal and non-literal meaning
- I’m hungry.
- I’m starving
- I could eat a horse
• Non-literal uses of language are traditionally
called figurative and are described by a host
of rhetorical terms including metaphor,
irony, etc. ex. glass ceiling for promotional
barriers to women or surfing the Internet