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CHAPTER ONE

SCOPE OF SEMANTICS

1.1 Introduction
Both traditional and modern linguists attest to the importance of semantics in the study of
language. Aitchison (1987:16) viewed it together with phonology and syntax as ''bread and
butter' of linguistics.' In this chapter, we will determine the scope of semantics and deal with
its relevant relationship with various disciplines like semiotics, sociolinguistics and
pragmatics.

1.2 Defining Semantics

Originally, semantics is a word derived from the Greek noun sema, i.e., 'sign, signal', and
the verb semaino 'signal, mean'. As a term, it was first used in 1883 by Michel Bréal, a
distinguished French philologist who focused mainly on diachronic development of word
meaning (i.e., how it evolves over a period of time); such a classic orientation gained ground
in semantic research until 1930s when scholars turned their interest into the synchronic study
of meaning.
Generally, semantics is the study of meaning in human Language (i.e., universal
linguistic system) which can refer to any language (i.e., specific linguistic system) of the
world used at daily basis such as English, Arabic, French and what have you. More
elaborately, it is a linguistic branch dealing with the study of meaning of morphemes, words,
phrases, and sentences (Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams, 2003: 173; Yule, 1996:114; Saeed,
1997:3) of a given language.

1.3 The Task of Semanticists

It is noteworthy that part of what semantics purports to seriously investigate is to analyse the
conventional meaning of linguistic items, rather than dealing with what people want these
items to mean on particular occasions (i.e. people's interpretation or intention). Put
succinctly, semantics describes context-free meaning.

A semanticist endeavours to inter alia to examine why people speaking a language

could easily recognize certain phrases and sentences as having the same meanings. Consider
Holmes' (1992:7) examples:

(1) Refuse should be deposited in the receptacle provided.

(2) Put your rubbish in the bin, Jilly.
(3) Please tender exact fare and state destination.
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(4) Give me the right money and tell me where you're going.

Sentences (1; 2) and (3; 4) display the same meaning respectively. True they differ in
words and constructions, but they agree upon the overall meaning.
Modern linguists discover that speakers have at least three levels of knowledge, namely
(1) phonological knowledge, (2) syntactic knowledge ad (3) semantic knowledge. The three
types of knowledge are technically labelled components of grammar (Saeed, 1997:9). They
are to be considered interdependently, for each type leads to the understanding of the other:
sounds form words and words build up sentences and sentences should have meaning. For
example, when we are learning a foreign language, we may come across a word in a book
which we do not know how it is exactly pronounced. We may hear a word but we do not
know what it means. Sometimes, we may even know both the pronunciation and meaning of
a word, but we may not know how, for example, its plural is formed if it is a noun. A word
therefore unites different kinds of knowledge. To reinforce this idea of interconnection of
meaning realisation, some linguists think that meaning is ‘a product of all linguistic levels.
Changing one phoneme for another, one verb ending for another, or one word order for
another will produce differences in meaning’ (Saeed, 1997: 9).
Given that, meaning should not be autonomously studied outside the sphere of
grammar, which leads semanticists to further look into why certain words and constructions
are combined together in a semantically acceptable way, while others are not (Palmer, 1981).
To illustrate, the following set of sentences are semantically acceptable:
(5) Mohamed is a bachelor.
(6) Bill Clinton was the President of USA few years ago.

whereas the construction of such sentences are semantically unacceptable:

(7) *Mohammed is a spinster.

(8) *Bill Clinton was the President of USA tomorrow.

While all these constructions are well-formed syntactically, their semantic imports are
clearly untenable. For example in sentence (5), Mohammed (a man) cannot be a spinster,
but a bachelor. Only an elderly unmarried woman can be called a spinster. And, in sentence
(8), the meaning of “was” does not go with the meaning of tomorrow. There is then an
inherent interaction of meaning and syntactic structure strongly confirmed by Chomsky
(1957) using his most famous and awkward sentence for illustration:

(9) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

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While the sentence is correct grammatically, its meaning is nonsensical, since ideas cannot
sleep as they are not animate objects, nor can they be furious or colourful. True, we can
produce or create endless novel linguistic constructions which we have not heard before
(but we do not imitate language as behaviourists claim to learn it), yet we need to observe
the Principle of Semantic Compositionality or what has so often been labelled Frege’s
Principle to account for the acceptability of such constructions.

1.3.1 The Principle of Semantic Compositionality

This principle states that “the meaning of an expression is a function of the meanings of its
parts and of the way they are syntactically combined” (Partee, 1984: 153; Portner and Partee,
2002: 1; Allan, 1986: 61–62; Strawson, 2001: 110-111; see also Strazny, 2005: 225 for some
notes). In the same vein, Cann (1993: 4) maintains that “the meaning of an expression is a
monotonic function of the meaning of its parts and the way they are put together.” In other
words, the overall meaning of a sentence (or a phrase), for example, is contingent on the
meanings of its constituent parts (i.e., words or morphemes), and how those parts are put
together in an acceptable order. Consider the following sentences for further illustration:
(10) Ali hit Adam.
(11) Adam hit Ali.
The two sentences above yield different meanings, although they contain the same
component words because they have two different word orders (i.e., two different syntactic
structures) (see also Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams, 2003: 188 for similar examples). The
agent or doer of the action (Ali) and the theme or the entity receiving the action (Adam)
swap places, hence the importance of word order in delineating meaning. On the other hand,
if syntactic order is violated, for example, in *wrote Mohammed book a, instead of
Mohammed wrote a book, meaning will be lost.

To reformulate therefore the views and definitions put forward on the principle of
semantic compositionality mathematically, I suggest the following in the form of a
function:

If “the meaning of an expression” stated above represents z, and x represents “the

meanings of its parts”, and y represents “the way they are syntactically combined”, we get
to the following formulae:

z = f(x, y)

P ⇔ (Q and R), that is P is true if and only if (iff)Q and R are also true.
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We will see the second formula in some detail when dealing with truth conditions
towards the end of this book. Let us also account for the importance of word order through
the following mathematical operations:

Solution 1
30: 2×5 = (30:2) ×5
= 15×5
= 75

Solution 2
30: (2×5) = 30: 10
=3
Both solutions are correct depending on the order of numbers. Meaning in language
works exactly in the same manner as has already been expounded in examples (10) and (11).

But, the principle of semantic compositionality faces some challenges as it cannot

account for productivity of natural language expressions all the time. At word meaning
level, the compound noun such as bookworm does not refer to a worm, but to “a person who
is unusually devoted to reading and study”. Similarly, the compound noun ashtray does
not mean a tray, but instead it is “a small dish in which smokers can put the ash from their
cigarettes and cigars”. Although we have two composed words put together into one single
word, we get only one corresponding meaning which does not have any relationship with
the meanings of those constitutive words. Polysemous words (i.e., words having more than
one sense) like home and room can also represent some difficulties for a compositional
account. Consider the sentence:

(12) There's no place like home.

(13) There is no room for doubt.

If the linguistic context is overlooked in (12) and (13), the immediate meanings that would
come to mind of the words home and room respectively are “one's place of residence” and
“a separate part of the inside of a building”. In fact the meaning of home in this linguistic
context is “country”, and that of room is “chance”.
At the phrase or sentence meaning, compositionality principle does not seem to
handle structures or idioms like: it is raining cats and dogs (i.e., it is raining heavily) or spill
the beans (i.e., to tell people secret information) or Achilles’ heel (i.e., the weak of vulnerable
spot in one’s character). The idioms here are noncompositional, in that the meanings of their
component words do not yield the right approved overall meaning; that is, the literal
meanings of the parts do not match with the meaning of the whole or the meaning of the
whole cannot be reduced to the meanings of its component parts, hence again the need for
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the observance of the appropriate linguistic context to avoid compositionality violation (for
an advanced discussion about compositionality, see Pelletier who expressed the challenge
nicely: “there are things that we know are in the meaning of the whole that just are not in the
parts” (2004: 137).

Defining semantics requires also determining its frontiers with other adjoining
linguistic disciplines.

1.3 Semantics and Semiotics

Understanding linguistic meaning (semantics) is only a subset of how people communicate
meaning. It is only a part of how people use signs, which could be nested, in fact, in words
or any other unspoken mode of communication like a sound, sight, touch, smell, taste and in
different contexts like dance, film, politics, eating, clothing, etc. Simply put, signs ‘do not
have meanings but rather are capable of conveying meanings to those who can perceive,
identify and interpret’ (Kreidler, 1998:22). By way of illustration, consider the following
examples:

(14) Losing one's senses of taste and smell completely may mean that one is infected with
coronavirus.
(15) green traffic light means you can go.
(16) Flying red flag means that beachgoers should take caution.
Generally, the verb mean is used to refer to inferences based on cause and effect and
on arbitrary conventional knowledge used commonly within a given society. It can yield
several meanings as Palmer (1981) maintained. In his study of sign, Ferdinand de Saussure
(1974) has distinguished between the signifier (i.e., the symbol of reference) and the
signified (i.e., the object or the thing referred to).
A further important categorization of sign into three types was introduced by Charles
Sanders Peirce, namely icon, index and symbol. An icon refers to the resemblance of a sign
to its referent, such as the one maintained between a portrait and the real subject it represents
or depicts. It is noteworthy in this conjuncture that in language (or in semantics), only a small
number of items could be argued to possess such directly 'iconic' properties like is the case
with onomatopoeic expressions such as Meow, cuckoo, crash, splash, whisper, hiss, growl
etc. As for an index, it refers to the causal association of the sign with its signified or referent;
thus smoke is a sign or an index of fire. A symbol, on the other hand, refers to the
conventional link between the sign and its signified, as in the use of red flying flag to denote
danger for swimmers or “perhaps the way that mourning is symbolized by the wearing of
black clothes in some cultures (Christians), and white clothes in others” (see Saeed, 1997:5).
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In the following section, I try to demonstrate how the meaning of a sentence could be
analyzed in different ways.

1.4 Semantics and Pragmatics

It is difficult to draw a clear-cut line between semantics and pragmatics, since both
disciplines transmit meaning through language. But, a rather simple difference considers
semantics as describing an abstracted surface meaning, and pragmatics as describing a deep
meaning. As Lyons (1977:643) maintained that semantics deals with sentence meaning or
non-situation-specific meaning; that is, a meaning which is not subject to speaker's use
(context/utterance meaning (ibid)). Some linguists like Östman (1988:28) viewed the
distinction between the two disciplines in terms of the functioning role that pragmatics
performs:

[if] the unit of analysis in semantics [is] simply meaning: the meanings of words, phrases, larger
constructions, prosody, and so on, … then by the same token, the 'unit' of analysis for pragmatics
could be said to be the functioning of language…

Other linguists like Leech (1983) found it difficult to set the difference between
semantics and pragmatics calling for a view of complimentarity:

The view that semantics and pragmatics are distinct, though complimentary and interrelated fields
of study, is easy to appreciate subjectively, but is more difficult to justify in an objective way. It
is best supported negatively, by pointing out the failures or weaknesses of alternative views.
(1983: 6)

He assumes that both of these areas of research complement each other, although they
are supposed to be mutually independent.

1.5 Aspects of Sentence Meaning

Traditional semantics has been concerned with the study of vocabulary/word meaning.
Contemporary semantics, on the other hand, has paid more attention to the analysis of
sentence meaning, especially those aspects of sentence meaning which cannot be predicted
from the individual lexemes it contains (see section 1.3.1 above). Some Aspects of sentence
meaning that deserve some attention are the following:

1.5.1 Prosodic Meaning

This feature looks into ways in which sentences are realized by the voice of speakers. Stress
movement could illustrate this idea exemplified in the following sentences:

(17) Mohamed read a book on 'SEMANTICS. (not on Psychology).

(18) Mohamed read a 'BOOK on semantics. (not a paper).
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(19) 'MOHAMMED read a book on semantics. (not Khadija).

Note that the words in capital letters are stressed, whereas the words between
parentheses provide us with the implied meaning of the sentence. We are presented here with
clear information nested in the sentence and other new information that is of special
attention.

1.5.2 Grammatical Meaning

Grammatical categories such as subject and verb can be semantically analysed as well. As a
case in point, in the sentence Mohammed damaged the radio, we have Mohammed acting as
a Subject, damaged as a Verb and the radio as an Object. Treatment of the same sentence
differs semantically, in that Mohammed acts as the Agent/Actor, damaged as the Action and
the radio as the Theme, hence again the important overlap between semantics and syntax
highly attested by Chomsky (1957) and by Richard Montague (1970: 378) who took
compositionality as the main part of his theory of meaning which was expressed in the
slogan: ‘Syntax is an algebra, semantics is an algebra, and meaning is a homomorphism
between them’ (Janssen 1983, 25).

1.5.3 Pragmatic Meaning

Pragmatic meaning is achieved by observing carefully the social context. A sentence like
it’s cold in this room could have both a literal/semantic or sentence meaning and a
pragmatic or utterance meaning. While the sentence meaning attends to the surface input of
the sentence, the utterance meaning, attends to the deep message; hence the aforementioned
sentence may imply a polite request: it is cold in this room because the window is open
(could you please close the window).

1.5.4 Social Meaning

This aspect of meaning suggests that the sentence we say is regulated by the relationships
we have with addressers. In French, for example, we should make a social distinction
between the singular ‘you’, tu and the plural you ‘vous’. While the former is used in informal
settings and with familiar participants, the latter is used in formal situations with highly
respected addressers (see Kharraki, 2009 for more information).

1.5.5 Propositional Meaning

This meaning is the most important level of analysis in modern semantics. It derives its ideas
from philosophy and logic. In this approach, a sentence (grammatical units) and a
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proposition are to be treated differently. A proposition is ‘the unit of meaning that identifies
the subject matter of a statement’ (Crystal1993:107). It is not concerned with the way given
information is issued. It is rather tested in terms of truth-false condition (Quine, 1960), and
thus “sentence meanings are functions of the meanings of the expressions .. that compose
them as well as their logical or grammatical form” (Odell, 2006: 7). Propositions “are
thoughts in the sense in which we can all – Germans, French people, English peoples, Asians,
Africans, Americans, etc. have the same thought” (Odell, 2006: 6-7).

Conclusion

References
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