about semantics

About Semantics

Muchamad Adam Basori, M.A TESOL

17 September 2011

Meeting 1

About Semantics

Definition: SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.

It may seem to you that MEANING is so vague, insubstantial, and elusive that it is impossible to come to any clear, concrete, or tangible conclusions about MEANING. We hope to convince you that by careful thought about the language you speak and the way it is used, definite conclusions CAN be arrived at concerning meaning.

2 General Meanings in Language

Speaker’s Meaning

Sentence Meaning (Word Meaning)

èSpeaker’s Meaning shows us that what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language.

èSentence Meaning is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.

Comments on 2 General Meaning

The word mean, then, can be applied to people who use language, i.e. to speakers (and authors), in roughly the sense of ‘intend’. And it can be applied to words and sentences in a different sense, roughly expressed as ‘be equivalent to’. The first step in working out a theory of what meaning is, is TO RECOGNIZE THIS DISTINCTION CLEARLY and always TO KEEP IN MIND WHETHER WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHAT SPEAKERS MEAN OR WHAT WORDS (OR SENTENCES) MEAN.

How do we ‘intend’ to convey information?

Someone must not connect MEANINGFULNESS with INFORMATIVENESS in a narrow sense. While it is true that many sentences do carry information in a straightforward way, it is also true that many sentences are used by speakers not to give information at all, but to keep the social wheels turning smoothly.

Read the following conversation between two people, A and B, at a bus stop one morning. (The lines are numbered for reference.)

1 A: ‘Nice day’

2 B: ‘Yes, a bit warmer than yesterday, isn’t it?’

3 A: ‘That’s right – one day fine, the next cooler’

4 B: ‘I expect it might get cooler again tomorrow’

5 A: ‘Maybe – you never know what to expect, do you?’

6 B: ‘No. Have you been away on holiday?’

7 A: ‘Yes, we went to Spain’

8 B: ‘Did you? We’re going to France next month’

9 A: ‘Oh. Are you? That’ll be nice for the family. Do they speak French?’

10 B: ‘Sheila’s quite good at it, and we’re hoping Martin will improve’

11 A: ‘I expect he will. I do hope you have a good time’

12 B: ‘Thank you. By the way, has the 42 bus gone by yet? It seems to be late’

13 A: ‘No. I’ve been here since eight o’clock and I haven’t seen it’

14 B: ‘Good. I don’t want to be late for work. What time is it now?’

15 A: ‘Twenty-five past eight’

Questions on The Conversation

(1) Does speaker A tell speaker B anything he doesn’t already know in lines 1, 3, and 5? Yes / No

(2) Does A’s statement in line 7 give B any new information? Yes / No

(3) When B says ‘Did you?’ in line 8, is he really asking A to tell him whether he (A) went to Spain?          Yes / No

(4) Is there any indication that A needs to know the information that B gives him about travelling to France? Yes / No

(5) Does A’s ‘That’ll be nice for the family’ in line 9 give B any information?Yes / No

(6) Do A’s statements in lines 13 and 15 give B any information that he (B) needs? Yes / No

(7) At what point does this conversation switch from an exchange of uninformative statements to an exchange of informative statements? .....................................................................................

(8) At what point does the information exchanged begin to be of a sort that one of the speakers actually needs for some purpose in going about his everyday business? ........................................

Answers on The Conversation

(1) probably not

(2) Yes, probably

(3) No

(4) No

(5) probably not

(6) Yes

(7) with B’s enquiry in line 6

(8) with B’s question in line 12

Comments on The Conversation

Thus A and B’s uninformative exchange about the weather serves to reassure them both that a friendly courteous relationship exists between them. Even when the sentences produced are in fact informative, as when B tells A about his forthcoming trip to France, the hearer often has no specific need for the information given. The giving of information is itself an act of courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships. This is also part of communication.

Speaker’s Meaning in Language Use

The social relationships formed and maintained by the use of language are NOT all polite and friendly. Speaker meaning can include both courtesy and hostility, praise and insult, endearment and taunt.

Consider the following strained exchange between husband and wife.

Husband: ‘When I go away next week, I’m taking the car’

Wife: ‘Oh. Are you? I need the car here to take the kids to school’

Husband: ‘I’m sorry, but I must have it. You’ll have to send them on the bus’

Wife: ‘That’ll be nice for the family. Up at the crack of dawn, (ironically) and not home till mid-evening! Sometimes you’re very inconsiderate’

Husband: ‘Nice day’

Questions on ‘Husband & Wife’ conversation

(1) This conversation includes three utterances which were also used in the polite bus stop conversation between A and B. Identify these three utterances. ......................................................................................

(2) When the wife in the above exchange says ‘Are you?’ is she thereby in some sense taking up a position opposed to that of her husband? Yes / No

(3) In the bus stop conversation, when A says ‘Are you?’ (line 9), is he in any sense taking up a position opposed to B’s position? Yes / No

(4) When the wife, above, says ‘That’ll be nice for the family’, is she expressing the belief that her husband’s absence with the car will be nice for the family? Yes / No

(5) When A says to B at the bus stop ‘That’ll be nice for the family’, is he expressing the belief that going to France will be nice for the family? Yes / No

(6) Is A’s remark at the bus stop ‘Nice day’ a pointed change of subject for the purpose of ending a conversation?         Yes / No

(7) What is the function of this remark of A’s? ....................................................

(8) When the husband uses these same words about the weather, above, what does he mean by it? ..................................................................................................

Answers on ‘Husband & Wife’

(1) ‘Are you?’, ‘That’ll be nice for the family’, and ‘Nice day’

(2) Yes

(3) No

(4)No,she is probably being sarcastic

(5) Yes

(6) No

(7) part of a polite prelude to more interesting conversation

(8) In the husband’s case, the remark is used to end a conversation, rather than initiate one.

Comments on Speakers’ Meaning

The same sentences are used by different speakers on different occasions to mean (speaker meaning) different things. Once a person has mastered the stable meanings of words and sentences as defined by the language system, he can quickly grasp the different conversational and social uses that they can be put to.

Sentence and Speaker Meaning

Sentence meaning and speaker meaning are both important, but systematic study proceeds more easily if one carefully distinguishes the two, and, for the most part, gives prior consideration to sentence meaning and those aspects of meaning generally which are determined by the language system, rather than those which reflect the will of individual speakers and the circumstances of use on particular occasions.

Sentence & Speaker Meaning (Contd.)

The gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning is such that it is even possible for a speaker to convey a quite intelligible intention by using a sentence whose literal meaning is contradictory.

Look at the following utterances and state whether they are intended to be taken literally (Yes) or not (No).

(1) Tired traveller: ‘This suitcase is killing me’                                          Yes / No

(2) Assistant in a shop: ‘We regularly do the impossible; miracles take a little longer’ Yes / No

(3) During a business meeting: ‘It’s a dog-eat-dog situation’                     Yes / No

(4) During a heated argument: ‘Don’t bite my head off!’                           Yes / No

(5) Hungry person at the dinner table: ‘I could eat a horse!’                     Yes / No

All questions above will be answered NO.

Examples such as those above show that speakers can convey meaning quite vividly by using sentences whose meanings are in some sense problematical.

To account for this, it is necessary to analyse at two levels: firstly, to show what is ‘wrong’ with such sentences, i.e. why they can’t be literally true, and secondly, how speakers nevertheless manage to communicate something by means of the sentences.

Attention to Sentence Meaning

We will now leave this topic of Speakers’ Meaning and give some attention to the question of how one studies meaning – to the methods of semantics.

Questions on Word & Sentence Meaning

(1) Can two people hold an ordinary conversation without knowing the meanings of the words they are using?                                       Yes / No

(2) Is it reasonable to say, if I use such English words as table and chair in the normal way in my conversation, communicating the usual messages that one does with these and other words, that I know the meanings of the words table and chair? Yes / No

(3) If one knows the meaning of a word, is one therefore necessarily able to produce a clear and precise definition of its meaning? Yes / No

(4) Conversely, if several speakers can agree on the correct definition of a word, do they know its meaning?                                  Yes / No

(5) Do you happen to know the meaning of the word mace in the Papuan language of West Papua, Indonesia?Yes / No

(6) Would a sensible way to find out the meaning of mace be to ask a speaker of Papua (assuming you could find one)?                         Yes / No

(7) The word mace in Papuan means mother, so it is not a particularly rare or technical word. Would any normal adult speaker of Papua be an appropriate person to approach to ask the meaning of the word?                              Yes / No

(8) If a native speaker of Papua insists that mace means mother (he expresses it), while a distinguished European professor of semantics who does not speak Papuan insists that mace means lady (however he translates it), who do you believe, the Papuan-speaker or the professor? ........................................................................

Answers on Word & Sentence Meaning

(1) No (2) Yes (3) No, being able to give the definition of the meaning of a word is not a skill that everyone possesses. (Studying semantics should considerably sharpen this skill.) (4) Yes, it would seem reasonable to say so. (5) Probably you don’t. (6) Yes (7) Yes, although some speakers, possibly through shyness or embarrassment, might not be able to give you a perfectly clear answer. (8) the Papuan-speaker

Comments on Word & Sentence Meaning

The meanings of words and sentences in a language can safely be taken as known to competent speakers of the language. Native speakers of languages are the primary source of information about meaning. The student (or the professor) of semantics may well be good at describing meanings, or theorizing about meaning in general, but he has no advantage over any normal speaker of a language in the matter of access to the basic data concerning meaning.