This document contains questions and responses related to semantics and discourse analysis. It discusses the differences between sense and reference, and how the meaning of words can vary based on context. It also examines the word as a unit of semantics and notes there are difficulties in defining it clearly. Some words have meaning, while others like prepositions do not. The document explores proposals on identifying the minimum meaningful unit within a word, and notes problems analyzing compounds and idioms. Overall, it argues the word cannot be considered the sole basic unit of semantics due to inconsistencies, and the lexeme is a more appropriate lexical unit, though definitions can still be arbitrary.
This document contains questions and responses related to semantics and discourse analysis. It discusses the differences between sense and reference, and how the meaning of words can vary based on context. It also examines the word as a unit of semantics and notes there are difficulties in defining it clearly. Some words have meaning, while others like prepositions do not. The document explores proposals on identifying the minimum meaningful unit within a word, and notes problems analyzing compounds and idioms. Overall, it argues the word cannot be considered the sole basic unit of semantics due to inconsistencies, and the lexeme is a more appropriate lexical unit, though definitions can still be arbitrary.
This document contains questions and responses related to semantics and discourse analysis. It discusses the differences between sense and reference, and how the meaning of words can vary based on context. It also examines the word as a unit of semantics and notes there are difficulties in defining it clearly. Some words have meaning, while others like prepositions do not. The document explores proposals on identifying the minimum meaningful unit within a word, and notes problems analyzing compounds and idioms. Overall, it argues the word cannot be considered the sole basic unit of semantics due to inconsistencies, and the lexeme is a more appropriate lexical unit, though definitions can still be arbitrary.
Sense relates to the complex system of relationship that holds between linguistic elements themselves (mostly the words) it is concerned only with intralinguistics relations. Reference deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements, words and sentences and the nonlinguistic world of experience. There are cases in the language in which conversation never refers to different things, and have constant reference. But sometimes a common sentence may have many references that are called variant references. And two different things ma have same referent. About the relationship between sense and reference: the referent of an expression is often a person or a thing in the world; where as the sense of an expression is not a thing at all. It is rather difficult to say what sort of entity the sense of an expression is. It is much easier to say whether or not two expressions have the same sense. The sense of expressions is abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. When a person understand fully what is said to him it is reasonable to say that he grasps the sense of expressions he hears. Thus it becomes a rule that the expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference. Even in different languages, one can talk of expressions in different dialects of one language as having the same sense. And we have noticed during our activities that a degree of idealization of the facts about meaning is there. In short both these notions are central to the study of semantics. The idea of reference is relatively solid and easy to understand. The idea of sense is more elusive; it is a bit like electricity, which we all know how to use, without being sure what exactly it is. Even in semantics it has not been clarified. Q.2 The word is one of the basic units of semantics, yet there are difficulties. According to linguistics word is one of the basic units of the semantics yet none of them agree on the meaning, origin and derivation of the word. And as for as the dictionaries are concerned they state the meaning of the words and so it is proper to assume that word is one of the basic unit of semantics. Some words have meanings and some have none. For example, Boys like to play, in this sentence the meanings of all the words are clear except to. So one of the grammarians of nineteenth century Henry Sweet has drew a distinction between the words which have meaning and those which have not. The words those have meanings he called them full words and the words that have not meanings at all he called them form words. He tells that it is the only full words about which we would find meanings and definitions in the dictionary while the form words are in the grammar and have only grammatical meaning. And that meaning is not stated in isolation, but only in relation to other words and even sometimes to the whole sentence. Hence the word is not clearly defined linguistic unit. Because sometimes it has meaning only in the written context and sometimes in relation to the stress that it has in the sentence. Here a renowned linguistics Bloomfield offered a solution by suggesting that the word is the minimum free form the smallest form that may occur in isolation. But this all depends on what is meant by in isolation. Then he further suggested that we should look for an element smaller than the word, a unit of meaning the morpheme. He cites two examples as berry in blackberry or y in Johnny. But later linguistics were more interested in the status of such words as loved that has two morphemes, but even there is also a difficulty as there are certain words which have different pattern as in take and took. And it is usually the same word that is used as a headword in the dictionary. A technical term for the word in this second sense is lexeme. Lexeme provides us the other grammatically related word but there is still a difficulty that is about the status of compounds. Even if we can identify elements within the word without actually segmenting the word itself, there are still problems about stating the meaning of the elements. The grammatical elements like grammatical words we considered earlier often seem to have little or no meaning. Other grammatical elements are almost devoid of meaning as in Latin and in Greek. There are other elements with in the word that have no meaning and are not grammatical and in cranberry is cran. Even more striking is the fact that there are many words in English that are called PHONAESTHETIC, in which one part, often the initial cluster of consonants, gives an indication of meaning of a rather special kind. Thus many words beginning with sl- are slippery, slide, slip, slush, sludge, etc. And still there are no consistencies about the number of semantics units we may recognize within a word. And in this connection Ullmann has made a distinction between Transparent and Opaque words. Transparent words are those whose meaning can be determined from the meaning of their parts, opaque words those for which this is not possible. He has cited many examples in this connection. And finally, we must notice that some whole groups of words must be taken together to establish meaning can be predicted from the meaning of the words contained in them for example idioms. Semantically, idioms are single units, but they are single grammatical units like words. All above considerations suggest that we must give up the idea that the word is the basic unit of semantics. Bazel commented in this connection that to seek a semantic unit with in the boundaries of the word simply because these boundaries are clearer than others is like looking for a lost ball on the lawn simply because the thicket provides poor ground for such search. But we do not proceed without some kind of lexical unit and the lexeme seems the most obvious one, even if its definition may on occasion be arbitrary, and it the meaning of the sequences of words is not always predictable form the lexemes contained in them. Q NO: 3 FIVE EXAMPLES AND COMMENTS. Q.NO.4 Linguistics are not the only scholars who have been interested in semantics. The subject has widely attracted philosophers and logicians and many experts of other fields as well. And there is no doubt that linguistics has gained great deal form scholars in all these disciplines. However their approach to the subject was different than that of linguists because their aim and objective was different. It would be difficult to state what the differences were, and it is more usefully simple to consider briefly a few of the topics that have been suggested. Some philosophers have suggested that many, if not all, philosophical problems can be solved by the study of language. It is argued, for instance, that the problems of the nature of good and evil, of right and wrong, in moral philosophy can be dealt with by seeing the way in which such words as good are used. The problem of the good that is to say is seen as the problem of the use of good. This is only marginal interest to the linguists. Nevertheless, some of the work of such philosophers have had an impact on the linguists, notably that of Austin with his proposal concerning per formatives and speech acts, of Strawson on presupposition. An older and more traditional area of philosophy that has interested linguists is that of logic. The logicians proposals have ranged from the comparavatively simple syllogism to highly complex logical syntax. But a word of warning is appropriate here; Logic makes use of concepts that are found in ordinary language. Nevertheless logical systems are self coherent and internally consistent models of idealized kind similar to those of mathematics and are no directly based upon, and there for can not be invalidated by, observation of natural language. Consequently the linguists should be suspicious of talk about the logical basis of natural language. The logical systems of the logicians are far neater and consistent than anything to be found in language. That does not form the basis of language. But are a highly idealized form of few of is characteristics. Q NO 5 LIST OF LEXEMES. ASSIGNMENT NO # S SEMANTICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS CODE NO 557 MAZHAR ABBAS ADDRESS: 133 GULSHAN PARK OPPOSITE MELAD HOUSE MANSOORAH MULTAN ROAD LAHORE