English Semantics

First, 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. 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. We choose from among a number of possible words that can fill the same blank: the words may be similar in meaning or have little in common but each is different from the others. Since we are used to a writing system that goes from left to right, we may think of syntagmatic relations as horizontal and paradigmatic relations as vertical. A compound expression, such as book and newspaper, cautious but arbitrary, read or write puts two lexemes that are paradigmatically related into a syntagmatic relationship.

As children, we learn vocabulary first through specific associations with specific things, actions, and characteristics (reference) and as we learn to recognize different instances of the ‘same’ thing, the ‘same’ event, and so on, we generalize (denotation). Slowly we learn from other members of our speech community and from our personal experiences what associations are favorable and which are not (connotation). And we acquire an implicit knowledge of how lexemes are associated with other lexemes (sense relations). Our implicit knowledge of syntagmatic relations facilitates our perception and identification of what we hear and read, enabling us to correct automatically what we hear and see, or what we think we hear and see, when correction is needed..

Meaning is more than denotation and connotation. 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. Part of this relationship is seen in the way words do, or do not, go together meaningfully. It makes sense to say John walked and it makes sense to say An hour elapsed. It doesn’t 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. Part of the relationship is seen in the way word meanings vary with context. A library is a collection of books (Professor Jones has a rather large library) and is also a building that houses a collection of books (The library is at the corner of Wilson and Adams Streets). A number of English verbs can be used in two different ways —different grammatical association—and then have slightly different meanings.

Here what happened to the window is the same, but in the first sentence broke is equivalent to ‘became broken’ and in the second it is equivalent to ‘caused to be broken.’ (More about this in the next chapter.) Adjectives, too, can have different senses. If you come across some object which you have never seen before, and you wonder about its origin and its purpose, we can say that you are curious about it. But we can also call the object a curious kind of thing. The same term is used for your subjective feelings and for the supposedly objective properties of this item—a curious person, a curious object. A judge makes decisions; if he is guided by personal whim or choice, the judge is arbitrary (dictionary definition: ‘inclined to make decisions based on personal whim’) but we also say that the decision is arbitrary (dictionary definition: ‘based on personal choice rather than reason’). A lexeme does not merely ‘have’ meaning; it contributes to the meaning of a larger unit, a phrase or sentence. Take these phrases with the adjective happy.

When happy combines with a word that has the feature [human], like child and family in the first line, it is roughly equivalent to ‘who enjoy(s) happiness’—a happy child is a child who has or enjoys happiness. In combination with words that have the feature [event] such as accident and experience, its contribution is roughly ‘that produces happiness.’ In combination with words that have the feature [discourse]—story, report—its meaning is roughly ‘containing a happy event or events.’ Each of these words has a range of meanings; each meaning is determined by its linguistic context, just as the meaning of door on any specific occasion is determined by the physical context in which it occurs. 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. We can notice two kinds of linkage, especially.

The word dog has a certain denotation, the possibility of entering into numerous referring expressions such as the underlined expressions in the following.
1 This dog is a Dalmatian.
2 My children have just acquired a dog.
3 Several dogs were fighting over a bone.

But how do you feel about dogs? How does a particular society value dogs? Hjelmsle (1971:109–10) pointed out that among the Eskimos a dog is an animal that is used for pulling a sled, the Parsees regard dogs as nearly sacred, Hindus consider them a great pest and in Western Europe and America some members of the species still perform the original chores of hunting and guarding while others are merely ‘pets.’ Hjelmslev might have added that in certain societies the flesh of dogs is part of the human diet and in other societies it is not. The meaning of dog includes the attitudes of a society and of individuals, the pragmatic aspect. It would be wrong to think that a purely biological definition of the lexeme dog is a sufficient account of its meaning. Part of its meaning is its connotation, the affective or emotional associations it elicits, which clearly need not be the same for all people who know and use the word. A denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning, which everybody generally agrees about. Connotation refers to the personal aspect of meaning, the emotional associations that the word arouses. Connotations vary according to the experience of individuals but, because people do have common experiences, some words have shared connotations.

Languages provide means of expressing different attitudes. The referring expressions that violin and that fiddle can have the same referent—can refer to the same object on a particular occasion—but they do not have the same meaning. They differ in connotation. Violin is the usual term, the neutral one; fiddle-is used for humor or to express affection or lack of esteem. Somewhat similar relations are seen with automobile and car, building and edifice, fire and conflagration and other sets, the members of which have, or can have, the same denotation but differ in the situations in which they are used and therefore have differences in the degree of formality, the style or ‘flavor’—the connotation. (We also need to note here that car, building, and fire have larger denotations than automobile, edifice and conflagration respectively.) The expression of attitudes can be quite subtle. We choose to use one word rather than another. We might, for example, say that Linda is thin, or slender, or svelte, or skinny.

In every language there are words like tree and run and red which seem to have an obvious relation to objects and events and descriptions of things in the world around us. Children learning their native language first learn words in association with observable items and situations and events. This simple fact can give rise to an overly simple idea about what ‘meaning’ is. We are likely to think that a language consists of a large number of words and each of these words has a direct correlation with something outside of language, which is its meaning. And since, if we communicate with one another through language, it must be that we all have the same ‘idea’ or ‘concept’ associated with each word. The best known elaboration of this view was made by Ogden and Richards (1923), who developed a mentalistic theory about meaning, an attempt to explain meaning in terms of what is in people’s minds.

Ogden and Richards called the bond between word and concept an ‘association,’ the bond between concept and object ‘reference,’ and the bond between object and word ‘meaning.’ When we hear or read a word, we often form a mental picture of what the word represents, and so we are apt to equate ‘concept’ with a mental picture. To be sure, it is easier to form a mental picture for some words—DOOR and DOG, for example—than for others such as ORDINARY or PROBLEM or PRETEND. But the idea of a mental picture is misleading. What mental image do you form for DOOR? A revolving door? A folding door? A sliding door, moving horizontally? An overhead door which moves vertically? A door turning on hinges? Is it in a wall, or on a cabinet, or part of a car? Is your image associated with DOG that of a St Bernard or a Pekingese, a mongrel or an Irish Setter? You can picture all of these in sequence but not simultaneously. Clearly the meaning of door or dog is more than what is included in a single image, and your knowledge of these words is much more than the ability to relate them to single objects. You can use these words successfully in a large number of situations because you have the knowledge that makes this possible.

Just as we distinguished between ‘utterance’ and ‘sentence,’ we need to draw a distinction betweeen reference and denotation. Reference is the relation between a language expression such as this door, both doors, the dog, another dog and whatever the expression pertains to in a particular situation of language use, including what a speaker may imagine. Denotation is the potential of a word like door or dog to enter into such language expressions. Reference is the way speakers and hearers use an expression successfully; denotation is the knowledge they have that makes their use successful.

The trouble with a mentalistic theory of meaning is, first, that not all words can be associated with mental images and some words have a range of meaning greater than any single association. The bigger problem with a mentalistic theory is that we have no access to other people’s minds. How can we ever know that we all have the same mental images? If semantics is a science, it cannot operate scientifically by starting with things that are not observable and not comparable. Furthermore, words are not the only semantic units. Meanings are expressed by units that may be smaller than words—morphemes—and meanings are expressed in units—sentences—that are larger than words. The sentences 'The dog bit a man' and 'The man bit a dog', to use a trite example, contain the same words but they don’t express the same meanings.

Furthermore, meaning is more than denotation. People not only talk and write to describe things and events and characteristics; they also express their opinions, favorable and unfavorable. Language furnishes the means for expressing a wide range of attitudes; this aspect of meaning is called connotation. Another aspect is sense relations: the meaning of any expression varies with context, what other expressions it occurs with and what expressions it contrasts with.