Meaning (Semantics and Pragmatics)
Meaning seems at once the most obvious feature of language and the most
obscure aspect to study. It is obvious because it is what we use
language for—to communicate with each other, to convey 'what we mean'
effectively. But the steps in understanding something said to us in a
language in which we are fluent are so rapid, so transparent, that we
have little conscious feel for the principles and knowledge which
underlie this communicative ability.
Questions of 'semantics' are an important part of the study of
linguistic structure. They encompass several different investigations:
how each language provides words and idioms for fundamental concepts and
ideas (lexical semantics), how the parts of a sentence are integrated
into the basis for understanding its meaning (compositional semantics),
and how our assessment of what someone means on a particular occasion
depends not only on what is actually said but also on aspects of the
context of its saying and an assessment of the information and beliefs
we share with the speaker.
Applications
Research in these areas reveals principles and systems which have many
applications. The study of lexical (word) semantics and the conceptual
distinctions implicit in the vocabulary of a language improves
dictionaries which enable speakers of a language to extend their
knowledge of its stock of words. It also improves materials which help
those acquiring a second language through instruction. Studying the
rules governing the composition of word meanings into sentence meanings
and larger discourses allows us to build computer systems which can
interact with their users in more naturalistic language. Investigating
how our understanding of what is said is influenced by our individual
and cultural assumptions and experience, which are much less visible
than what is explicitly said, can help make us more aware and effective
communicators. The result of all of these (sometimes very abstract)
investigations is a deeper understanding and appreciation of the
complexity and expressive elegance of particular languages and the
uniquely human system of linguistic communication.
The Importance of Context
We can appreciate how someone can mean more than they `strictly
speaking' say by considering the same thing said in two different
contexts. Consider two people, Pat and Chris, who are getting to know
each other on a first date. If Chris says to Pat at the end of the
evening, "I like you a lot.", Pat will likely feel good about the
situation. But imagine that Pat and Chris have been dating for some
weeks, and Pat asks, "Do you love me?" Now if Chris says, "I like you a
lot," the reaction will likely be quite different, as Chris' statement
is taken as a negative answer! The difference does not come from the
content of what is said but from the operation of a general pragmatic
principle: When evaluating something on a scale of values, putting it at
a certain point on the scale implies that all the higher values on the
scale are inappropriate. It is our background assessment that positive
feeling is ranked on a scale with 'love' higher than "like" which makes
Chris' reply in the second context convey "No, don't love you." We apply
this scalar principle so automatically that it is easy to overlook the
fundamental pragmatic difference between what is actually said and what
is implied by the saying of it.
A close examination of most words reveals that they have many different
senses and the rules which combine them into sentence meanings will
frequently yield several possibilities for interpretation. Usually we
resolve potential ambiguity unconsciously—unless someone carefully
constructs a joke which turns on an ambiguity. Consider for example this
joke, taken from Douglas Adams' The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
Ford and Arthur, are stowaways on a space ship.
Ford: You should prepare yourself for the jump into hyperspace; it's unpleasantly like being drunk.
Arthur: What's so unpleasant about being drunk?
Ford: Just ask a glass of water.
The passage turns on the ambiguity of the word 'drunk', which can be an
adjective, meaning 'affected by alcohol', or the passive form of the
verb 'drink'. Arthur takes Ford as intending the first sense of
'drunk'—with good reason: he's unlikely to mean that someone would drink
him. But Ford reveals that the bizarre interpretation is what he
intends. The art of the image is the metaphorical treatment of a person
as a liquid; the joke turns on the sleight of hand which makes our
semantic interpreter lean in one direction before pulling us back in an
unexpected way with a disambiguation.
These examples illustrate our semantic and pragmatic abilities in
action. The goal of linguistic research into meaning is to illuminate
the processes and knowledge involved.
by William Ladusaw
Suggested Readings
Chierchia, Gennaro, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1990. Meaning and grammar.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Allen, James. 1995. Natural language understanding. Redwood City, CA: Benjamin Cummings, Pub. 2nd edn.
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