Semantics
What is Semantics?
And what is the importance of the meaning in semantics.
During the period between 1957 and
1965 Katz and Fodor proposed a semantic theory which appeared in ‘Language’
(1963); a prelude to Chomskyn systems as the rule of the semantic component
(Cf. Judith Greene 1977;63). Katz and Fodor’ theory was modeled to perform two
functions; first to provide a systematic basin for picking out synonymous, ambiguous
and anomalous sentences; secondly to assign semantic interpretations to
permissible sentences.
v
What is Semantics
Semantics is a science which studies
meaning and development or words in language. The word ‘semantics’ comes from
the Greek word ‘sema’ which means ‘sign’ or ‘signal’. The verb ‘semains’ means
‘mean or signify’. The ‘Oxford Dictionary’ also defines the word
‘semantics’ as ‘signification’ or ‘meaning’.
It deals with the history and changes
in the meaning of objects (names, things) and concepts (ideas). Semantics has
two approaches; synchronic and diachronic. Synchronic semantics deals with the
meaning and development of words in a
given period of time. It pays no
attention to past history or future destiny. While diachronic semantics deals
with inter-relations of different periods in the matter of changes and
development in the meaning of words. A semanticist analyzes and discovers
ambiguities in the meaning of words. He explains antonyms, synonyms, homonyms,
polysemy, anomaly, contradiction, implication, transformation and ambiguity of the language. He also
explains their nature, function, and relation. That way, he does not study
meaning of different words only but he also studies their inter-relations.
According to Manfred Dier Wish
- Semantic theory must a make reference to the syntactic structure in a precise way.
- systematically represent the meaning of a single word
- How the structure of the meaning of words and the syntactic relations interact in order to constitute. The interpretation of sentence.
- It must indicate how these interpretation are related to the things spoken about.
Thus according to Manfred
Bierwish, semantics deals with meaning of individual words their status in
a sentence, their inter-relations and their context to the thing spoken about.
The study of meaning of words is the
heart of semantics.
v
Importance of the Meaning
Structuralists try to study language
without meaning. The importance of meaning that has been recognized since times
immemorial. Each and every word hears its own shades of meaning. The Vedas also
consider meaning as the essence of language. Speech without meaning is call the
tree without fruits of flower’ Ancient Indian linguistics such as Patanjali and
Vyas remarks that there is an eternal relationship between word and meaning.
Patanjali points out those words naturally express meaning. There is a large
variety of words in different languages of the world. There will be nothing
like semantics if a word means the same thing in all languages. Some western
scholars today have started talking about semantic universals and there is a
wide agreement that meaning is the soul
of word.
v
Difficulties in the Study of Meaning
The problem of ‘meaning’ is quite
difficult, it is because of its toughness that some linguists went on to the
extent of excluding semantics from linguistics. A well-known structuralist made
the astonishing statement that ‘linguistic system of a language does not
include the semantics. The system is abstract, it is a signaling system, and as
soon as we study semantics we are no longer studying language but the semantic
system associated with language. The structuralist were of the opinion that it
is only the form of language which can be studied, and not the abstract
functions. Both these are misconceptions. Recently a serious interest has been
taken in the various problems of semantics. And semantics is being studied not
only by the linguists but also by philosophers, psychologists, scientists,
anthropologists and sociologists.
Scholars have long puzzled over what
words mean or what they represent, or how they are related to reality. They
have at times wondered whether words are more real than objects, and they have
striven to find the essential meanings of words. It may be interesting to ask
whether words do have essential meaning. For example, difficulties may arise in
finding out the essential meaning of the word table in water table, dining
table, table amendment, and the table of 9. An abstract word like good creates even
more problems. Nobody can exactly tell what good really means, and how a
speaker of English ever learns to use the word correctly. So the main
difficulty is to account facts about essential meanings, multiple meanings, and
word conditions. The connotating use of words adds further complications to any
theorizations about meaning, particularly their uses in metaphor and poetic
language. Above all is the question : where does meaning exist: in the speaker
or the listener or in both, or in the context or situation ?
Words are in general convenient units
to state meaning. But words have meanings by virtue of their employment in
sentences, most of which contain more than one word. The meaning of a sentence,
though largely dependent on the meaning of its component words taken
individually, is also affected by prosodic features. The question whether word
may be semantically described or in isolation, is more a matter of degree than
of a simple answer yes or no. It is impossible to describe meaning adequately any
other way except by saying how words are typically used as part of longer
sentences and how these sentences are used. The meanings of sentences and their
components are better dealt with in linguistics in turns of how they function
than exclusively in terms of what they refer to.
Words are tools; they become
important by the function they perform, the job they do, the way they are used
in certain sentences. In addition to reference and function, scholars have also
attached import talkie to popular historical considerations, especially
etymology, while studying word-meanings. Undobtedly the meaning of any word is
casually the product of continuous changes in its antecedent meanings or uses,
and in many cases it is the collective product of generations of cultural
history. Dictionaries often deal with this sort of information if it is
available, but in so ding they are passing beyond the bounds of synchronic
statement to the separate linguistic realm of historical explanation.
Different answers have been given to
the questions related to meaning. Psychologists have tried to assess the availability of certain kinds of
responses to objects, to experiences, and to words themselves. Philosophers
have proposed a variety of systems and theories to account for the data that
interest them. Communication scientists have developed information theory so
that they can use mathematical models to explain exactly what is predictable
and what is not predictable when messages are channeled through various kinds
of communication networks. From approaches like these a complex array of
conceptions of meaning emerges.
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