第五章
Teaching aims: enable the students to have a better understanding of semantics and wording meaning.
Focal points: Leech’s seven classifications of meaning, semantic triangle, sense relations between words and sentences
Teaching difficulties: sense relations between sentences, different types of antonymy
Teaching procedure
The subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics.关注意义研究的学科. In this chapter, we will study another branch of linguistics-----semantics.
. An Introduction
Definition: In linguistics, it is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular. 语义学是对语言单位，尤其是词和句子的意义的研究。
Its goal is to reveal how language is matched with their proper meanings by the speakers of that language.
Semantics is an old and young branch.
Dating from Plato, the study of meaning has a long history. Philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists all claim a deep interest in the study of meaning, although they differ in their focus of interest.
Philosophers: the relation between linguistic expression and what they refer to in the real world and evaluation of the truth value of it.
Psychologists: understanding the working of human mind through language.
So you many find several books bearing the title “semantics” but talking about different things. Here we just focus on linguistic semantics.
In linguistics, compared with other branches we have discussed, semantics is very young and new. The term semantics is a recent addition to the English language. It has only a history of over 100 years.
1893 French linguist Breal coined “semantique”
1897 Breal first use it as the science of meaning.
1900 its English version came out
1980s semantics began to be introduced into China “Cinderella of linguistics” (Kempson)
One of the most famous books on semantics is The Meaning of Meaning published in 1923.
Semantics----semantics refers to the study of the communication of meaning through language. Or simply, semantics is defined as the study of meaning.语义学是研究语言意义的学科，它主要是对词义和句子两方面进行研究。
5.1. Meanings of “meaning” “意义”的意义P158
1 what is meaning?
What is the meaning of “desk”? √
I didn't mean to hurt you. (intend)
Life without faith has no meaning. (value)
It was John I mean not Harry (refer to ) √
Though it is difficult to define, “meaning” has the following meaning: (1) an intrinsic property; (2) the connotation of a word; (3) the words put after a dictionary entry; (4) the position an object occupies in a system; (5) what the symbol user actually refers to; (6) what the symbol user should refer to; (7) what the symbol user believes he is referring to; (8) what the symbol interpreter refers to; (9) what the symbol interpreter believes it refers to; (10) what the symbol interpreter believes the user refers to…linguists argued about “meaning of meaning” fiercely in the result of “realism”, “conceptualism/mentalism”, “mechanism”, “contextualism”, “behaviorism”, “functionalism”, etc. Mention ought to be made of the “Semantic Triangle Theory” of Ogden & Richards. We use a word and the listener knows what it refers to because, according to the theory, they have acquired the same concept/reference of the word used and of the object/referent.
2. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning?
(1) The naming theory命名论----
one of the oldest notions converning meaning, and also a very primitive one, was the naming theory proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory , the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or label for things.命名论是最原始的语义理论，该理论是把词看作所指事物的名称。
The limitations of the naming theory:
a. first of all, the naming theory seems appliable to nouns only. Nouns can be considered as names or labels, but verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, such as “think” “hard ” “slowly” are definitely not labels of objects.
b. Besides, within the category of nouns, there are nouns which denote things that do not exist in the real world at all such as “ghost” “dragon” “unicorn” and also nouns that do not denote concrete things, but abstract notions such as “joy” “impulse”.命名论只能适用于名词，对于动词、形容词、副词就无法解释了。即使是在爱名词范围内也无法解释世界上本不存在的东西，例如“ghost” “dragon” “unicorn”之类和一些抽象的概念，例如“高兴joy”“冲动impulse”等。
(2) the conceptualist view 意念论------
The conceptualist view holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i.e.,between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.意念论认为词汇与该词汇所指的事物之间的关系不是直接的，而是间接的，是靠人脑中的意念来连接的。词汇是通过意念来指称事物，意念便是词汇的意义。
The conceptualist view is best illustrated by the classic senmantic triangle or triangle of significance suggested by Odgen and Richards.意念论可由著名的语义三角形来表述。语义三角形是论述和解释语义现象的一种经典理论。
Semantic triangle
Proposed by Ogden & Richards in their “The Meaning of Meaning”. They saw the relationship between the word and the thing it refers to is not direct. It’s mediated by concept.
thought or reference


symbol referent

In this diagram, the symbol or form refers to linguistic elements (words, phrases), the referent refers to the things in the real world, and thought or reference refers to “concept”.
e.g. The dog over there looks unfriendly.
The word “dog” is directly associated with a certain concept in our mind, i.e. what a “dog” is like, but it is not directly linked to the referent (the particular dog) in this particular case. Thus, the symbol of a word signifies thing by virtue of the concept associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of a language, and the concept looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word.
Ogden and Richards presented the classic “Semantic Triangle” as manifested in the following diagram, in which the “symbol” or “form” refers to the linguistic elements (word, sentence, etc.), the “referent” refers to the object in the world of experience, and “thought” or “reference” refers to concept or notion. Thus, the symbol a word signifies “things” by virtue of the “concept”, associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language. The “concept” thus considered is meaning of the word.语义三角形最大的问题在于词语与所指事物没有必然的联系。同一个事物可能或者可以用不同的词来表示。
(3) contextualism 语境论
What is contextualism?
“Contextualism” is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from, or reduce it to, observable context: the “situational context” and the “linguistic context”. 语境论认为语言的意义离不开使用语言的语境，语义存在与语境之中。语义不是抽象的，它是由语境所决定的。
Every utterance occurs in a particular spatial-temporal situation, as the following factors are related to the situational context:它的前提是假设人们可以从语境中推知词义的意义，四个核心因素：
(1) the speaker and the hearer; 讲话人和听话人
(2) the actions they are performing at the time; 当时双方在做的事情
(3) various external objects and events; 其他外在的事件或事物
(4) deictic features. 指示成分 （语境中的代词）
The “linguistic context” is another aspect of contextualism. It considers the probability of one word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another, which forms part of the meaning, and an important factor in communication.
Fox example: the meaning of the word “black” differ in the two collocation of “black hair ” and “black coffee”
(4) Behaviorism 行为主义论
The behaviorism view is illustrated by Bloomfield.
Behaviorism refers to the attmpt to define the meaning of a language form as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer”. Behaviorism somewhat clsoe to contextualism emphasizes on the psychological response.行为主义论和语境论的相似之处，行为主义论也把语义放到语境中去研究，但它更注重人的心理活动，认为语言的意义存在于语言使用者在交际过程中对所接受的话语的反应。
3. How many kinds of meaning did linguists find and study?
C. C. Fries (1952) makes a traditional distinction between lexical meaning and structural meaning. The former is expressed by those “meaningful” parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and is given in the dictionary associated with grammar. The latter expresses the distinction between the subject and the object of a sentence, oppositions of definiteness, tense the number, and the difference between statements, questions and requests. In a word, “the total linguistic meaning of any utterance consists of the lexical meaning of the separate words plus such structural meaning…”
G. Leech (1981) categorizes seven kinds of meaning, five of which are brought under the “associative meaning”. Different from the traditional and the functional approach, F. R. Palmer (1981) and J. Lyons (1977) suggest we draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the former being directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence, while the latter includes all the various types of meaning not necessarily associated there to.
4. G. Leech recognizes seven types of meaning in his <<semantics>> as follows:
(1) Conceptual meaning ------Logical, cognitive, or denotation content 逻辑的，认知的，或者外延的内容
conceptual meaning: the central part of meaning, which contains logical,cognitive,or denotative content.
Associative meaning:联想意义
(2) Connotative meaning------what is communicated by virtue of what language refers to.内涵意义：通过语言所指所传达的意义
(3) Social meaning-----what is communicated of the social circumstances of language use.社会意义：所传达的关于语言使用的社会环境的意义
(4) Affective meaning-----what is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writer.感情意义：所传达的关于说话人或作者感情，态度方面的意义
(5) Reflected meaning------what is communicated throght association with another sense of the same expression. 反射意义：通过联系同一表达式的其他意思所传达的意义
(6) Collocative meaning------what is communicated through association with words which tend to occur in the environment of another word.搭配意义：通过联想词语的常用搭配而传达的意义。
(7) Thematic meaning----what is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.主题意义：通过由顺序和重音组织信息的方式所传达的意义
5. Leech says that the first type of meaning-----conceptual meaning----makes up the central part. It is “denotative” in that it is concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refer to. In this sense, conceptual meaing overlaps to a large extent with the notion of reference.利奇指出，意义的第一种类型----概念意义----构成了意义的中心部分。这种意义是“外延“的，因为它关注词和他所指事物之间的联系。从这点看，概念意义在很大程度上与指称相交叉。
6．Philosophers use connotation, opposite to denotation, to mean the properties of the entity a word denotes. For example, the denotation of human is any person such as John and Mary, and its connotation is “biped”, “featherless”, “rational”, etc.哲学家们用内涵和外延相对，表示词所指实体的性质。例如，人的外延是任何人，如约翰和玛丽；内涵是“两足动物”“无羽毛的”“有理性的”等等。
7. “connotative”----- refers to some additional, especially emotive, meaning. 内涵指的是一些附加的，尤其是感情的意义。
denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrade that relates it to phenomena in the real world.
connotation: a term in a contrast with denotation,meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes.
Types of meaning (G. Leech)
5.2. The referential theory 所指论
1. The referential theory------the theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stand for, is known as referential theory.把词语意义和它所指或所代表的事物联系起来的理论，叫做指称论。
2. what is sense and what is reference? How are they related?.
reference: the use of language to express a propostion,meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes.
sense: the literal meaning of a word or an expression,independent of situational context.
Sense------sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form, which is a collection of semantic meanings, abstract and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning dectionary compilers are interested in.意义是词汇意义的一个侧面，它是指词汇内在的抽象，独立于语境之外的意义，也是词典字意。
Reference----reference is what a linguistic form refers to in the real physical, it is a matter of the relationship between the form and the reality, between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.所指意义是词汇意义的另一个侧面，它是词汇在特定的语境中所指称的具体事物。所指也叫“参照”“或“指称”，是指词和它们所代表的客观事物或现象的关系，它表现于一定的上下文之中。
(1) linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations. For example: I was once bitten by a dog. / Mind you. There is a dog over there.
有着同样意义的词，在不同的情景中，它的所指也不相同。
(2) linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense. For example: “morning star” and “ evening star.” 有时所指相同，但意义却不同。
３．What is the difference between meaning, concept, connotation, sense, implication, denotation, notation, reference, implicature and signification?“Meaning” refers to the association of language symbols with the real word.
“Concept” or “notion” is the impression of objects in people’s mind.
“connotation” is the implied meaning, similar to “implication” and “implicature”.
“Sense” is the lexical position in which a word finds itself.
“Denotation”, like “sense”, is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world.
“Reference” is the word-object relationship.
“Implicature”, in its narrow sense, refers to conversational implicature achieved by intentionally violating one of the four CP maxims. “Signification”, in contrast with “value”, mean the meaning of situation may not have any communicative value, like “What’s this?”
４．Sense & reference
sense and reference are the two terms often encountered in the study of word meaning. They are two related but different aspects of meaning.
Sense-----the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; It’s abstract and de-contextualized. It’s the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in. It is concerned with the intra-linguistic relations.
Reference-----What a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; It deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements and the non-linguistic world of experience.
For example, the word “dog” is given the definition “a common domestic animal kept by human beings for work, hunting etc or as a pet”. This doesn’t refer to any particular dog that exists in the real world, but applies to any animal that meets the features described in the definition, so this is the sense of the word “dog”. But if we say “The dog is barking”, we must be talking about a certain dog existent in the situation, the word “dog” refers to a dog known to both the speaker and the hearer. This is the reference of the word “dog” in this particular situation.
To some extent, we can say every word has a sense, i.e. some conceptual content. But not every word has a reference e.g. grammatical words like but if etc, don’t refer to anything.
Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations.
e.g. I was one bitten by a dog.
Mind you. There is a dog over there.
Here the two “dog” bear the same sense, but have two different references in the two utterances.
Sometimes linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense
e.g. “morning star” and “ evening star” can refer to the same star “Venus”