Galuh Anggraini 2005410062 S4C Semantic

The dimensions of meaning

1. Reference and denotation Reference

Reference is the relation between a language expression such as this door, both doors, the dogs, another dog and whatever the expression pertains to in a particular situation of language use, including what a speaker may imagine,

the way speaker and hearer use an expression successfully, the relationship between language and the world, the same expression can refer to number of different thing, some expression have fixed reference different expressions may refer to the same referent, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including person) are being talked about. Example: John is standing alone in the corner

Denotation

Denotation is the potential of a word like door or dog to enter into such language expression, the knowledge they have that makes their use successful. denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning,

a stable relationship in a language which is not dependent on anyone use a word. the relationship between an expression and its extension.

2. Connotation

Connotation is language furnishes the means for expressing a wide range of attitudes, the affective or emotional associations it elicits, which clearly need not be the same for all people who know and use the word,

Connotation refers to the personal aspect of meaning, the emotional associations that the word arouses.

3. Sense relations

What a word means depends in part on its associations with other words, the relational aspect. Lexemes do not merely have meanings; they contribute meanings to the utterances in which they occur, and what meanings they contribute depends on what other lexemes they are associated with in these utterances. The meaning that a lexeme has because of these relationships is the sense of that lexeme.

It makes sense to say John walked and it makes sense to say An hour elapsed. It doesnt make sense to say John elapsed or An hour walked. Part of the meaning of elapse is that it goes with hour, second, minute, day but not with John, and part of the meaning of hour, second and so forth is that these words can co-occur with elapse.

A lexeme does not merely have meaning; it contributes to the meaning of a larger unit, a phrase or sentence.

The meaning of a lexeme is, in part, its relation to other lexemes of the language. Each lexeme is linked in some way to numerous other lexemes of the language.

There are two kinds of linkage:

1. there is the relation of the lexeme with other lexemes with which it occurs in the same phrases or sentences, in the way that arbitrary can co-occur with judge, happy with child or with accident, sit with chair, read with book or newspaper. These are syntagmatic relations, the mutual association of two or more words in a sequence (not necessarily right next to one another) so that the meaning of each is affected by the other(s) and together their meanings contribute to the meaning of the larger unit, the phrase or sentence. 2. Another kind of relation is contrastive. Instead of saying The judge was arbitrary, for instance, we can say The judge was cautious or careless, or busy or irritable, and so on with numerous other possible descriptors. This is a paradigmatic relation, a relation of choice.

4. Lexical and grammatical meanings

A referring expression is a piece of language that is used AS IF it is linked to something outside language, some living or dead entity or concept or group of entities or concepts.

The entity to which the referring expression is linked is its referent. Another meaningful part is the verb bark, which is also linked to something outside of language, an activity associated, here, with the referring expression a dog. It is call this meaningful part a predicate.

Every language has a grammatical system and different languages have somewhat different grammatical systems.

The best explain what grammatical meanings are by showing how the sentence A dog barked differs from other sentences that have the same, or a similar, referring expression and the same predicate.The grammatical system of English makes possible the expression of meanings like these: statement vs question: A dog barked. Did a dog bark?

affirmative vs negative: A dog barked. past vs present: A dog barked. singular vs plural: A dog barked. indefinite vs definite: A dog barked. The dog barked. Some dogs barked. A dog barks. A dog did not bark. No dog barked.

Dog and bark Their meanings are not grammatical but lexical, with associations outside language. They are lexemes. A lexeme is a minimal unit that can take part in referring or predicating. All the lexemes of a language constitute the lexicon of the language, and all the lexemes that you know make up your personal lexicon.

5. Sentence meaning

the meaning of a sentence derives from the meanings of its constituent lexemes and from the grammatical meanings it contains. So if all the lexical and grammatical meanings expressed in a sentence, you know the meaning of the sentence, and vice versa.

if the sentence is a statement, if the meaning of the sentence, you know what conditions are necessary in the world for that sentence to be true. Example : Albert Thompson opened the first flour mill in Waterton.

this sentence is true or not, but if it is true, there must exist (at some time) a person named Albert Thompson and a place called Waterton (presuppositions), that Albert Thompson opened a flour

mill, and that there was no flour mill in Waterton before Albert Thompson opened his mill (entailments). If this sentence is true, the sentence Albert Thompson did not open the first flour mill in Waterton is false (a contradiction).

11. One team consisted of six students from Felman College.

This sentence represents an utterance that is part of a larger discourse. It means even though we are unfamiliar with Felman College (if such an entity exists) because we know the lexical and grammatical meanings of the components and we can deduce that Felman College names an entity similar to some that we do know. And we can infer more than this. From the phrase one team we infer that the larger discourse contains information about at least one other team.

12. One team consisted of the six students from Felman College.

Sentences 11 and 12 tell the same thing about the composition of the team but 12 is more informativehas more meaningabout students from Felman College. From 11 we can infer that there were at least six students from Felman College. Sentence 12 says that there were only six students from Felman College.

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Source : James R, Hurford, Brendan Heasley, & Michael B. Smith. Semantics: A coursebook. 2 nd. Ed. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Kreidler, Introducing English semantics, London: Routledge, 1998.