What is semantics?
Any attempt to understand the nature of language must try to describe and explain the ways in which linguistic expressions have meaning. This book introduces some of the aspects of meaning studied in linguistic semantics, the branch of linguistics which, along with pragmatics, has responsibility for this task. Semantics is one of the richest and most fascinating parts of linguistics. Among the kinds of questions semanticists ask are the following:
• What are meanings — definitions? ideas in our heads? sets of objects in the world?
• Can all meanings be precisely defined?
• What explains relations between meanings, like synonymy, antonymy (oppositeness), and so on?
• How do the meanings of words combine to create the meanings of sentences?
• What is the difference between literal and non-literal meaning?
• How do meanings relate to the minds of language users, and to the things words refer to?
• What is the connection between what a word means, and the con texts in which it is used?
• How do the meanings of words interact with syntactic rules and principles?
• Do all languages express the same meanings?
• How do meanings change?
Clearly, semantics is a vast subject, and in this book we will only be able to introduce the most important parts of it. ‘Meaning’, however, is a very vague term. In ordinary English, the word ‘meaning’ is used to refer to such different things as the idea or intention lying behind a piece of language, as in (1), the thing referred to by a piece of language (2), and the translations of words between languages (3).
(1) ‘I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at by saying “meat is murder”: do you mean that everyone should be a vegetarian?’
(2) ‘I meant the second street on the left, not the first one.’
(3) ‘Seiketsu means “clean” in Japanese.’
As we will see, an important initial task of linguistic semantics is to distinguish between these different types of meaning, and to make it clear exactly what place each of them has within a principled theory of language (see Sections 1.4 and 1.6).
Each of the chapters of this book introduces some essential concepts for understanding the ways in which meaning can be analysed in linguistics. This first chapter is an introduction to the issues and concepts studied in linguistic semantics. In Chapter 2 we consider the relation between meanings and definitions. When we think about word meanings, definitions in dictionaries quickly come to mind: we know that, if uncertain about a word’s meaning, we can look it up in a dictionary. This means that it is important to be clear about the similarities and differences between the aspects of meaning that interest linguists, on the one hand, and lexicographers (dictionary-writers) on the other. In Chapters 3 and 4 we discuss the relation between word meaning and word use: how do we distinguish between what a word actually means, and the way in which it happens to be used on a given occasion? Chapter 5 looks at attempts to analyse the meanings of words into sets of basic components, and dis cusses the problem of determining just how many meanings a given word has. In Chapter 6 we introduce some concepts from formal logic which have been fruitfully applied to the analysis of natural language meanings, and in Chapters 7 and 8 we look at the ways research inspired by psychology has been used to illuminate linguistic semantic questions, and how the results of this research can be modelled on computers. Chapter 9 explores the semantics of the parts of speech and of tense and aspect. Chapter 10 discusses the relationship between semantics and syntax, a subject which raises many important questions. Chapter 11 emphasizes a somewhat different aspect of meaning, its changeability. Meaning is always changing, both synchronically (i.e. between different speakers at the same time) and diachronically (over time). No comprehensive study of meaning can neglect this variation and change.
