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Mean, Means, Meaning: 1. What Is Semantics?

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It focuses on understanding what speakers mean when they use language as well as what words and sentences literally mean. There is often a gap between speaker meaning, which is what a speaker intends to convey, and sentence meaning, which is the literal meaning of the words. Semanticists aim to carefully distinguish these concepts and study how meaning is determined by language systems versus individual usage. Native speakers are a primary source of information about meaning, though meanings can vary across dialects of a language. The goal of semantic theory is to construct a coherent framework that explains semantic facts about languages.

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169 views2 pages

Mean, Means, Meaning: 1. What Is Semantics?

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It focuses on understanding what speakers mean when they use language as well as what words and sentences literally mean. There is often a gap between speaker meaning, which is what a speaker intends to convey, and sentence meaning, which is the literal meaning of the words. Semanticists aim to carefully distinguish these concepts and study how meaning is determined by language systems versus individual usage. Native speakers are a primary source of information about meaning, though meanings can vary across dialects of a language. The goal of semantic theory is to construct a coherent framework that explains semantic facts about languages.

Uploaded by

Ngan Pham
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1. What is semantics?

Semantics is the study of meaning in language.


mean , means , meaning
Lewis Carroll’s aim was to amuse, and he could afford to be enigmatic and even nonsensical.
The aim of serious semanticists is to explain and clarify the nature of meaning.
The word “mean” 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.

Speaker meaning is what a speaker means (i.e. intend to convey) when he uses a piece of
language.
Sentence meaning (Word meaning) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as
the equidvalent of in the language concerned.
Show example
- The social relationships formed and maintained by the use of language are not all courteous and
amicable. Speaker meaning can include both courtesy and hospility, praise and insult,
endearment and taunt.
- the same sentences are used by different speakers on different occasions to mean (speaker
meaning) different things.
- 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 ans those aspects of meaning generally which are determined by the language
system, rather than those which relect the wil of individual speakers and the circumstances of use
on particular occasions.
The gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning is such tht it is even possible for a
speaker to convey a quite intelligible intention by using a sentence whose literal meaning is
contradictory or nonsensical.
The meanings of words and sentences in lnguage can safely be taken as known to competent the
speakers of the language. Native speakers of languages are the primary source of information
about meaning.
English, like most language, has a number of different dialects. Just as the pronunciation of
English varies from one dialect to another, so there are also differences in the basic semantics
facts from one dialect of English to another.
“dialect” used in the way normal in Lingustics, to indicate any variety of a language, regardless
of whether it has prestige or not.
Theory is a precisely specified, coherent and economical frame-work of interdependent
statements and definitions, constructed so that as large a number as possible of particular basic
facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in terms of it.
Semantics concentrates on the similarities between languages, rather than on the difference.
Semantic theory is a part of a larger enterprise, lingustic theory. which includes the study of
syntax (grammar) and phonetic (pronunciation) beside the study of meaning. It is a chracteristic
of Lingusticss as a whole that it concentrates on the similarity between languages.

2. Semantics and its possible included aspects


Word meaning
Semantics features

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