LECTURE 2. THE PROBLEMS OF MEANING IN LEXICOLOGY.

REFERENTIAL APPROACH

2.1. The main question of semantics. Referential approach to meaning.

Referential semantics
2.2. Types of semantics. Word semantics: referential semantics (reference)
& sense semantics
2.3. Semantic triangle. Denotation and reference

The main question and the focus of semantics is the relations between words
and things, actions, events and relations they denote. How is the word connected
with its referent?
Let us locate reference within the overall field of semantics. Within
semantics three main branches are distinguished: word semantics, sentence
semantics and utterance semantics. Word semantics seeks to explain the
phenomenon of meaning in a natural language by means of defining the nature
of word meaning. There are two ways of looking at word meaning resulting in two
branches: reference / referential semantics and sense / lexical semantics. Reference
is the definition of the relations between words and objects. Reference is
concerned with designating things, actions, activities, properties, and so on in the
outside world by means of linguistic items. (J. Handke
https://youtu.be/_NtVeofqUKA) The relation between the word and the class of
entities it stands for is called DENOTATION.
Some scholars distinguish between denotation and reference. Denotation is
the relation between a linguistic expression and a class of entities in the world.
REFERENCE labels out the activity of picking out precise things of reference in
the world on some specific occasion (meaning in context).
 Types of reference: definite, indefinite, generic reference. E.g. The doctor
sent it to her. Definite determiners: the, our; pronoun: I, she; names: Paul, Mexico;
locative adverbs: here and there; temporal adverbs: now, yesterday. A doctor sent
it to her. Indefinite determiners: a, many; indefinite pronouns: anyone, anywhere;
Generic reference: The computer is a valuable tool./A computer is a valuable
tool. / Computers are valuable tools. – Collective reading. The computer is
obsolete. / Distributive reading: A computer is obsolete / A computer has a
monitor.
How can we define these types of reference? One of the oldest views is
Plato’s dialogue crativus, so called ‘naming view’. It takes supposition that the
word refers to a particular object that is meaning is reference. However, there
some difficulties in the naming view reference, that is abstract words such as
‘love’, extinct objects, such as ‘dinosau’, which do not have the referent anymore;
an object of the real world that have more than one name, such as planet Venus /
Morning Star / Evening Star. Opaque contexts, such as John knows that Bill wants
to kiss Mary. So we need more sophisticated view to determine the meaning.
Modern semantics has adopted a more complex perspective in which
reference is only one dimension of meaning. The other dimension is referred to as
sense. The German logician Gotlieb Frege (1848-1925) was the first to mention
two dimensions of our semantic knowledge of expression – sense & reference
(Sinn & Bedeutung). The modern solution to the problem of explaining the nature
of word meaning is to define the meaning in terms to a concept in the speaker’s
mind. This relationship can be best illustrated by the semantic triangle as
introduced by Charles Ogden and I. V. Richards. The idea is that words and
objects can be related in several ways.
One way is ONOMOTOPOEIA – a relationship between a linguistic sign
and an object via its phonetic shape, i.e. sounds and objects. It works well with
items like ‘cow’ (moo in all languages – German, Russian, French), but it works
less well with ‘dogs’ (English: bow-wow; German wow-wow, Russian: gav-gav)
and it works even less comprehensive with a cock (German: ki-kirikiki, English:
cokudoodle-do, Russian – ku-ka-re-ku). You can clearly see that onomatopoeia
affects only a number of items, that is why the bottom line is not a straight line but
dashed. ……TRIANGLE рисунок

The other type of relation is more direct and is referred to as ICONICITY –

the use of imagery in the linguistic signs or more precisely the term referring
to the property of some linguistic signs, whose physical form closely
corresponds to the characteristics of the objects they refer to. Here are two
examples where it seems to work: gr A nd, l A rge, / t I ny, p Et Ite, BUT bIg,
мAло, etc. But such cases are rare, as only a few items are said to possess such
symbolic properties. In the majority of the cases the relationships are established
via concepts in the human mind. The problem here is to know, ‘What form do
these concepts take? Concepts have the status of mental categories because classify
experience and provide knowledge about entities, which fall into them, but what is
the best way of categorizing conceptual categories? Classical approach defines a
conceptual category such as animal or man in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions for an entity in the world to be a member of that capital category. By
convention, ‘CONCEPTS’ are written in capital letters.
Despite its intuitive appeal this approach has a number of shortcomings. The
meanings of concepts, such as ‘LOVE’ and ‘HOUSE’ cannot be captured by
means of necessary and sufficient conditions. There are too many variants and they
are too abstract. The description of the category in terms of conditions implies that
it has a sharp fixed boundary but as various experiments have shown that the
boundaries of categories, such as ‘WARM’ and ‘COLD’ are fuzzy and change with
the context (GOOD/BAD; HIGH/ LOW; TALL/HIGH/ SHORT). The approach
cannot explain, why some members are felt to be better examples than the others.
E.g., penguin is not the best example for a bird – it cannot fly. Due to these
problems, several more sophisticated theories of concept representation have been
proposed. One of them is the theory of prototypes. The Prototype theory assumes
that conceptual categories possess an internal structure comprising the central
members, less central members and borderline cases. E.g., a penguin and kiwi are
borderline cases, as they cannot fly. Whereas birds like a sparrow, robin, robin
redbreast, and a thrush are very prototypical, and an owl, lets put it somewhere in
the middle. (but ‘sea robin’ is not a bird)
Category membership is defined by reference to a cluster attributes,
characterized the prototype. Members which are closer to prototype share more
features with it than peripheral members. The conceptual category is structured by
a network of similarities that units its members, centered around the prototype. The
boundaries of the category are not clearly defined but fuzzy. Prototype theory has a
success but it’s not without problematic aspects. E.g. the exact definition of the
properties that define the prototype is very much disputed.
The final issue we have to discuss is how words are mapped onto concepts.
Words map onto complex multi-dimensional networks of concepts. The links
between concepts are of different kinds: ‘a kind of’, ‘a part of’, ‘used for’ and
possess variable strength. Words directly activate concepts and indirectly give
access to other concepts linked to them as well depending on the strength of the
link. E.g., the word ‘dog’ has a direct link to the concept DOG and indirect link to
the superordinate concept ANIMAL. There are several possible configurations for
the mapping between words and concepts: ‘one to one’ relationships – aircraft =
vehicle; ‘one to many’ relationships – table = a piece of furniture / a piece of data;
‘many to one’ kill, murder, associate, dispose of, liquidate = activate the concept
CAUSE TO DIE.

Following de Saussure, linguistic sign is a mental unit, consisting of two

facets, which cannot be separated: a concept and an acoustic image. The term
‘sign’ is quite a general expression that can refer to sentences, clauses, phrases,
words, or morphemes. De Saussure referred to concept as ‘signifié’ or ‘thing
meant’ and to acoustic image as ‘signifiant’ or ‘signifier’.
 According to the Oxford Dictionary, the 500 most used words in the English
language have at least 14,070 different definitions. This is an average of 28
meanings per word. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our communication
attempts sometimes fail because of misconceptions and ambiguity. We need to
have clear and precise concepts connected to our terms in order to design reliable
term bases and glossaries.
Given that one of the goals of terminology management is to facilitate
communication and avoid misunderstandings and confusion, it would be helpful to
understand the basics of the semiotic triangle.

Englishmen Charles Kay Ogden and Ivor Armstrong Richards wrote the
book “The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon
Thought and of the Science of Symbolism” (1923), and the semantic triangle was
the means they used to explain that understanding comes from within the people
rather than from the words they just interpret or, as the saying goes, words don’t
mean; people mean. In their book they presented three theories: The Meaning
Theory (There is not a single “correct” meaning associated with each and every
word because each word means something different to each person); the Definition
Theory (In order to avoid this ambiguity we need to define terms or concepts) and
the Symbol Theory (words evoke images and personal meaning is based on
experience). Communication breaks when people attempt to communicate through
the use of arbitrary words. Words have no exact or clear meaning, and meaning
depends on context.
You will find different triangles with different terminology, so we mention
here the most common ones: The Sign or Symbol or Term (Representation) is the
actual word, term, or sign; the mental image or idea that the person has of this
representation is the Thought or Reference or Concept. If the Thought is adequate,
the hearer is able to connect it to the Referent or Object.
 
 
 
 
 
 
All meaning is elicited through symbols, or is arrived at through personal
interpretation. The meaning does not go with the word, it emerges by the person
hearing it, thinking about it and ultimately arriving at meaning.
Richards and Ogden’s triangle has been challenged over the years by other
semioticians, such as Umberto Eco, who maintain it is overly simplistic. According
to Sue Ellen Wright, “One of the major deterrents (inhibitions) to using the
triangle is its numerous interpretations and the variable of terminology associated
with the nodes of the triangle”, but then she adds that the triangle is useful
“particularly for non-linguists approaching terminology practice for the first time”.
And even in more advanced terminology work and studies, the semiotic triangle
has proven to be useful as a basis for further research in different terminological
systems, such as logic, semiotics, sociocognitive terminology.
Terminological data must be handled efficiently and effectively through
careful terminology planning and analysis as we constantly process specialized and
complex information on how objects are perceived, how we come up with concepts
for new or existing terms, and how these perceptions are represented and
described. So just by looking at the terminology works mentioned above it is more
than evident that understanding the semantic triangle is a relevant topic for
terminologists.
The Semantic triangle is also known as Triangle of Semantics, Triangle of
reference, the Semiotic Triangle, the Referent Triangle, Triangle of Meaning, the
Ogden-Richards Triangle, and the Meaning of Meaning Model.

2.4. The word is a linguistic sign, so a discussion of word meaning focuses

on the relationships between the two facets of the sign: the acoustic image and the
concept or ‘signifié’, i.e. the thing meant in a context. The main problem is how to
accommodate the fuzzy nature of meaning and the ambiguity inherent in the notion
of word. In this regard, we shall examine most common terms which will be
useful in further discussion of sense relations: denotation and reference;
denotation and connotation.
To clarify the distinction between denotation & reference we need the term
‘lexeme’, coined by Lyons in analogy to ‘phoneme’, & ‘morpheme’. LEXEME is
an abstract linguistic unit with different variants: SING – sang, sung, singing,
sings.
Thus, the relation of denotation holds between a lexeme and a whole class of
extra-linguistic objects. Lyons defines denotation as ‘the relationship that holds
between that lexeme and persons, things, places, properties, processes and
activities external to the language system (Lyons 1977: 207). It is therefore
difficult to produce concrete examples of denotation as it is the relationship that
holds between an abstract linguistic unit and a whole class of extra-linguistic
objects.
As opposed to denotation, reference is the relation that holds between an
expression and what this expression stands for on particular occasions of its
utterance (Lyons 1977: 207). The reference depends on concrete utterances, not on
abstract sentences. It is a property only of expressions. It cannot relate single
lexemes to extra-linguistic objects, since it is an utterance dependent notion.
Reference is not generally applicable to single word forms and it is never
applicable to single lexemes. (Lyons 1977: 197). E.g. John’s computer, the
computer, two portable computers on the desk – may be used to establish a
relationship of reference with specific items as referents. The reference of these
expressions, containing ‘computer’ is partly determined by the denotation of the
lexeme COMPUTER in the overall system of English.
We have defined ‘denotation’ according to Lyons, whose definition of sense
evolved over time. Sense is a relationship “ between the words or expressions of s
single language, independently, of the relationship, if any, which holds between
those words or expressions and their referents or denotata” (Lyons 1977: 207).
Sense is a relationship that is internal to the language system = a language
immanent relationship. Both individual lexemes and larger expressions have sense.
The sense of an expression is a function of the sense of the lexemes it
contains and their occurrences in a particular grammatical construction. E.g. Can
you sit in the shade of the palm of your hand And play on the drum of your ear? /
Can that boy give me a hand – get on the palm and get a coconut for me?
The comparison between denotation and sense shows that the two relations
are dependent on each other. According to Lyons, some words may have no
specific denotation but still have sense:
E.g. there is no such animal as a unicorn. / There is no such book as a unicorn.
While the first is perfectly acceptable, the second is semantically odd. This
double observation proves that though the lexemes BOOK and UNICORN are
incompatible, ANIMAL and UNICORN are somehow related in sense. a word or
expression may have sense but no denotation.
Relations of denotation and sense somehow parallel to that of lexicology/
semantics and syntax, which are different: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. =
Syntactic (sense) but lexically unacceptable (denotation). (Chomsky 1957).

SEMINAR 2.

2.1. Types of words. Ex.3/1

2.2. Polysemy amd homonymy (exercise3/5) . Problems inherent in the
concept of polysemy.
2.3.Semantic structure of a polysemantic word. (J3.3.;3.4.)
2.4. Denotation and connotation. (exercise 3/3) Types of connotation.
Multiword lexemes. Idioms. Set expressions. Classifications of idiomatic units.