Geoffrey leech semantics the study of meaning

English Linguistics: Essentials, 2020

Semantics (Greek semain-= to mean) is the only branch of linguistics which is exclusively concerned with meaning. Semantics studies the meaning or meaning potential of various kinds of expressions: words, phrases, and sentences. This chapter is mainly confined to the study of word meaning (lexical semantics; lexicology). Research in lexical semantics addresses the following questions: ■ How can the concept of meaning be elucidated, including the relation between meaning and external reality? ■ What are appropriate tools for analysing and describing meanings? ■ What kinds of semantic structures exist within the vocabulary (or: lexicon) of a language?

This practical coursebook introduces all the basics of semantics in a simple, step-bystep fashion. Each unit includes short sections of explanation with examples, followed by stimulating practice exercises to complete the book. Feedback and comment sections follow each exercise to enable students to monitor their progress. No previous background in semantics is assumed, as students begin by discovering the value and fascination of the subject and then move through all key topics in the field, including sense and reference, simple logic, word meaning, and interpersonal meaning. New study guides and exercises have been added to the end of each unit (with online answer key) to help reinforce and test learning. A completely new unit on non-literal language and metaphor, plus updates throughout the text, significantly expand the scope of the original edition to bring it up-to-date with the modern teaching of semantics for introductory courses in linguistics as well as intermediate students.

Introducing English Semantics is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to semantics, the study of meaning.

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. We know that language is used to express meanings which can be understood by others. But meanings exist in our minds and we can express what is in our minds through the spoken and written forms of language (as well as through gestures, action etc.). The sound patterns of language are studied at the level of phonology and the organization of words and sentences is studied at the level of morphology and syntax. These are in turn organized in such a way that we can convey meaningful messages or receive and understand messages. 'How is language organized in order to be meaningful?' This is the question we ask and attempt to answer at the level of semantics. Semantics is that level of linguistic analysis where meaning is analyzed. It is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe meaning as we can observe and record sounds. Meaning is related very closely to the human capacity to think logically and to understand. So when we try to analyze meaning, we are trying to analyse our own capacity to think and understand, our own ability to create meaning. Semantics concerns itself with 'giving a systematic account of the nature of meaning' (Leech).

Semantics and Pragmatics, 2020

Meaning-making is at the center of all human communicative events. Communication is an exchange of meanings encoded in written or spoken words, non-verbal cues, signs, symbols, and so on. Creating, exchanging, and interpreting meaning is ingrained in human nature since prehistoric times. Language is the most sophisticated medium of communication. It is through language that we set meanings or in other words — refer, define, and signify the things in nature and the ideas in our mind. (Griffiths, 2017) The term ‘meaning of meaning’ was first coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in 1923. According to him meaning is related to multiple phenomena. It has various facets and these features are related to the external world (extra-linguistic factors) and the linguistic properties (phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics) The concept of meaning is vast and has many moving parts. Questing for the answer — ‘what is the meaning of meaning’ makes us take a multi-disciplinary approach; from linguistics, philosophy, neurology, to semiotics. In this essay, I will reflect on the meaning of ‘meaning’ from a multidisciplinary approach, discuss the challenges of doing meaning, and the role of context in understanding the meaning of words and sentences.

This practical coursebook introduces all the basics of semantics in a simple, step-bystep fashion. Each unit includes short sections of explanation with examples, followed by stimulating practice exercises to complete the book. Feedback and comment sections follow each exercise to enable students to monitor their progress. No previous background in semantics is assumed, as students begin by discovering the value and fascination of the subject and then move through all key topics in the field, including sense and reference, simple logic, word meaning, and interpersonal meaning. New study guides and exercises have been added to the end of each unit (with online answer key) to help reinforce and test learning. A completely new unit on non-literal language and metaphor, plus updates throughout the text, significantly expand the scope of the original edition to bring it up-to-date with the modern teaching of semantics for introductory courses in linguistics as well as intermediate students.

2020

First things first: What kind of book is this? Well, this is a textbook, an introduction to linguistic semantics; but it is an advanced introduction to the field, and it requires a certain degree of application on the part of the reader. (However, as we shall see, it is structured in a way that makes it easier to navigate than it might seem at first.) Apart from this, the book has the following two main "distinctive features": • It adopts a view of semantics as a component, or module, of the linguistic system, whose functioning is simulated by a corresponding linguistic model. Language is considered to be a set of rules that establish correspondences between meanings and their possible expressions, and the lion's share of this correspondence is taken care of by the semantic module. This is the approach put forward by the Meaning-Text linguistic theory and its language models, called, predictably, Meaning-Text models. • It is organized around a system of rigorous notions, specified by about eighty mathematical-like definitions. (Some of the notions that will be introduced are semanteme, semantic actant, communicative dominance, lexical function.) This system is deductive, consistent and formal; therefore, our exposition is also deductive and (strives to be) logically consistent. Four salient characteristics of the Meaning-Text approach, reflected in the way the present textbook is organized, need to be mentioned.

This paper examines meaning in language. It is therefore a study in semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning in terms of the linguistics. Semantics begins from the stopping point of syntax and ends from where pragmatics begins. A separate discipline in the study of language, semantics has existed for decades. The term semantics was first used by Breal in 1987 and it does not suggest that there had never been speculations about the nature of meaning (Ogbulogo (2005). Words, phrases and sentences are used to convey messages in natural languages. Semantics is the study of meaning systems in language. If meaning is a system, then language is systematic in nature. In this paper, we investigate the nature of meaning to locate the significance of semantics in contemporary linguistics. Frege, cited in Sandt (1988:1) rightly notes that “... [If ] anything is asserted there is always an obvious presupposition that the simple or compound proper names used have reference.” Hinging on different submissions in the literature, we conclude that meaning is: socio-cultural, dynamic, grammar-driven, conventional, representative (referential), individualistic (non-conventional) and is not exhaustive.

"In its totalizing ambition, there are many reasons to think that the project of reductively characterizing semantic structure may be undesirable in itself. As Stanley Rosen notes, “every hermeneutical program is at the same time itself a political manifesto or the corollary of a political manifesto” (2003: 141). This applies a fortiori to the programme of linguistic semantics, the goal of which is not, as in (applied) hermeneutics, to interpret texts, but to give an account of the very constituents of meaning that any textual interpretation presupposes. Since semantic analyses of language – or, to give them an older name, attempts to identify the “language of thought” – are closely related to claims about the conceptual abilities of speakers and the cultural resources of communities, we semanticists surely should be – and often are – cautious in arguing for the theoretical uniqueness for our current models of meaning. Claiming that, from the point of view of the linguistic system, such and such an expression has such and such core or central semantic properties risks reductively diminishing our picture of the complexity of languages, and hence of the linguistic practices and conceptual and cultural richness of their speakers."