Discuss the concept of Semantics and elaborate
Name-Sense-Reference
Semantics
is the study of meaning in language. We know that language is used to express
meanings which can be understood by others. But meanings exist in our minds and
we can express what is in our minds through the spoken and written forms of
language (as well as through gestures, action etc.). phonological,
morphological and syntactic processes are organized in such a way that we
can convey meaningful messages or receive and understand messages.
‘How is language organised in order to be meaningful?’
This is the question we ask and
attempt to answer at the level of semantics. Semantics is that level of
linguistic analysis where meaning is analysed. It is the most abstract level
of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe meaning as we can
observe and record sounds. Meaning is related very closely to the human
capacity to think logically and to understand. So when we try to analyse
meaning, we are trying to analyse our own capacity to think and understand, our
own ability to create meaning. According to Leech, Semantics concerns
itself with:
“giving a systematic account of the nature of meaning”
In
Semantics, what we study largely concerns with sense and reference. It has been
explained earlier that signs refer to concepts as well as to other
signs. A sign is a symbol that indicates a concept.
This concept is the reference, which refers in turn to some object in
the real world, called the referent. The relationship between linguistic items
(e.g. words, sentences) and the non-linguistic world of experience is a
relationship of reference as illustrated in the diagram given by Ogden and
Richards. The objects in the real world are referents,
the concept which we have of them in our minds is the reference and
the symbol we use to refer to them is the word, or linguistic item. As we have
seen, we can explain the meaning of a linguistic item by using other
words. The relation of a word with another word is a sense-relation. Therefore,
sense is the complex system of relationships that holds between the linguistic
items themselves. Sense is concerned with the intra-linguistic
relations, i.e. relations within the system of the language itself, such as
similarity between words, opposition, inclusion, and pre-supposition. Sense
relations include homonymy, polysemy, synonymy and antonymy. When the
linguistic elements and larger structures relate to the experiential side of
communication or the ‘the non-linguistic world of experience’, we are talking
of reference. The relationships that hold among elements of language are known
as sense relations. Palmer says:
“The dictionary is
usually concerned with sense-relations, with relating words to words”
Homonyms
are different items (lexical items or structure words) with the same phonetic
form. They differ only in meaning, e.g. the item ‘ear’ meaning ‘organ of
hearing’ is a homonym of the item ‘ear’ meaning ‘a stem of wheat’. Homonymy may
be classified as: (a) Homography: a phenomenon of two or more words having the
same spellings but different pronunciation or meaning, e.g. lead /led/ = metal;
lead/li:d/ = verb. (b) Homophony: a phenomenon of two or more words having the
same pronunciation but different meanings or spellings, e.g. sea/see, knew/new,
some/ sum, sun/son. It is difficult to distinguish between homonymy and
polysemy as in polysemy, the ‘same’ lexical item has different meanings, e.g.
‘bank’, ‘face’: Two lexical items can be considered as synonyms if they have
the same denotative, connotative and social meaning and can replace each other
in all contexts of occurrence. But still complete synonymy is rarely
possible. Antonyms are lexical items which are different both in form
as well as meaning. An antonym of a lexical item conveys the opposite sense,
e.g. single-married, good-bad. Another kind of sense-relationship is
hyponymy. Hyponymy is the relation that holds between a more general and
more specific lexical item. For example, ‘flower’ is a
more general item, and ‘rose’, ‘lily’, etc. are more specific. The
more specific item is considered a hyponym of the
more general item—’rose’ is a hyponym of ‘flower’. The specific item
includes the meaning of the general. When we say
‘rose’, the meaning of ‘flower’ is included in its meaning. ‘Rose’ is
also hyponymous to ‘plant’ and ‘living thing’ as these are the
most general categories. There are other sense relations ass
collocation, euphemisms, dysphemism and the like. In general, all these
sense-relations are peculiar to a language and every language develops its own
system of sense-relations. In short, the study of meaning and its
manifestation in language is called ‘Semantics’ and this manifests through
sense-relations. Words are tools; they become important by the function they
perform. As a result, words form certain kinds of relations which are
called name-sense relations.
Written
By:
Prof
Qasim Nazar
M.
Phil in Applies Linguistics
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