JULY 1970

VOL. 77, No. 4

PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT:
ASPECTS OF A COGNITIVE THEORY OF SEMANTICS 1
DAVID R. OLSON 2
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
The argument presented here consists of three parts. First, it is shown by
reference to the role of semantics in a transformational grammar that semantic decisions are not determined by either syntactic or semantic selection
restrictions but by the speaker's knowledge of the intended referent. Second,
it is shown that current theories of word-referent relations are inadequate
to specify the grounds for the above-mentioned semantic decisions. Finally,
by the use of a paradigm case, a theory of reference in terms of a cognitive
theory of semantics is advanced in which it is shown that a semantic decision,
such as the choice of a word, is made so as to differentiate an intended
referent from some perceived or inferred set of alternatives. The implications include an altered conception of meaning, a statement of the relative
information in words and in pictures, a hypothesis about the redundancy of
the postulation of deep structure, and revised conception of the relation
between language and thought.

The problem of semantics stands at the

intersect of three independent disciplines:
philosophy, linguistics, and psychology.
While there is little agreement about how
to attack the problem, there is considerable
agreement that the progress to date has
been very limited. This paper attempts to
frame an account of semantics that is based
on the language user's knowledge of the
world, that is, his cognition.
The semantic system involves the categories, meaning, meaning components, and
dimensions that correspond to the recurrent
features of the world. This system is closely
tied to the referents, the objects and events
in the environment, and it reflects the needs
1
A portion of this paper was presented at the
Conference on Human Learning, Prague, Czechoslovakia, July 1969. The author is indebted to
Frank Smith for several of the ideas that appear
in this paper, to the participants in the seminar
group for their critical reactions and suggestions,
and to numerous colleagues with whom the author has discussed various aspects of this paper.
2
Requests for reprints should be sent to David
R. Olson, Department of Applied Psychology,
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252
Bloor St. W., Toronto 5, Canada.

and interests of the language community

there are, understandably, more words for
"snow" among the Eskimos and more words
for "language" among the linguists. Yet,
in spite of this rather obvious correlation,
linguistic theories of semantics have tended
to abandon the problem of reference, that
is, the specification of the meaning of words
in terms of referent objects or events in
favor of the problem of sense, that is, the
meaning of words in terms of other words
or meaning components within the language
system.
This trend is not without reason. Since
words correspond in some way to objects
and events (referents), and since many of
these events are universal, one should find
a high percentage of signs or words or
conceptual classes that are universal. But
a modest amount of ethnological sophistication will
persuade us that for the human race as a whole,
there are not very many universally shared designata perhaps only a hundred items [Weinreich,
1963, p. 147].

And even these hundred are not identical.

As Weinreich points out, while it appears

257
1970 by the American Psychological Association, Inr

258

DAVID R. OLSON

that all languages have a word for "eye," in

one language eye has a second meaning of
"see," in another a second meaning of "middle." Second, a single referent may be
designated by many wordsa particular
man may be called a father, a psychologist,
an animal, a god, a machine, George, and so
on. Hence, meaning cannot be equated with
reference.
For these and other reasons, linguists
have largely ignored the problem of reference and have attempted to account for
word meaning in terms of meaning components, frequently other words in the language. From a philosophical point of view,
the problem of reference and meaning has
received considerable attention. Ogden and
Richards (1923), for example, developed an
elaborate theory of meaning which appears
to have strongly influenced the psychological
accounts of meaning in terms of behavioral
responses to objects and events advanced by
Osgood (1963, 1968) and Brown (1958).
Recently, however, there has been a strong
movement to develop an account of language
including meaning within the framework
of Chomsky's transformational linguistics,
largely independent of the problem of reference.
This paper, first, shows that a semantic
theory necessarily involves the language
user's nonlinguistic knowledge by showing
that the choice of words in an utterance is
a function of neither syntactic nor semantic
selection restrictions, narrowly defined, but
of the speaker's knowledge of referents.
Second, having implicated the knowledge of
referents in semantic decisions, theoretical
attempts to account for word-referent relations are examined. Finally, an account of
reference in the form of a cognitive theory
of semantics is sketched.
REFERENCE IN SEMANTIC THEORY
In his original formulation of the problem
of the relation between syntax and semantics, Chomsky (1957) showed that some
sentences that were meaningless could nonetheless be grammatical, and that some sentences that were meaningful could be non-

grammatical. From this he concluded that

grammar is "autonomous and independent
of meaning [p. 17]." He went on to assume that grammar was primary, in that
meaning could not be assigned until the
sentence had been segmented or parsed by
the grammar. This was represented formally in the model by suggesting that the
base structure of the language provided the
input into the semantic component. Specifically, Chomsky's (1965) model postulated
a base component of the grammar which
specified the membership of a class of wellformed deep structures such as subjectverb-object, and a semantic component which
relates these deep structures to their semantic representations. The transformational
component of the grammar which reorganizes
the base structure into a surface structure
suitable for the phonological representation
of actual speech need not be considered here.
The critical point is the relation of the
base syntactic component to the semantic
component. This influence was hypothesized
to occur via syntactic selection restrictions;
once sets of inherent features such as human
or animate were assigned to the noun in
the base component, they have the effect
of limiting the selection of the verb or object
to a lexical item fitting these same sets of
features. McCawley (1968) has recently
shown that this cannot be the case; the
grammar cannot determine the semantic
features of the words that may occur. His
example is that a verb such as count may
seem to demand a plural object, thus, "I
counted the boys," not "I counted the boy."
However, there are comparable sentences
with grammatically singular objects: "I
counted the crowd."
Therefore, the selection restriction of
count is not that the grammatical object be
plural but rather that it denote or refer to
a set of objects, not to a single object. As
McCawley concluded, the choice of the word
counted depended on the plural aspect of
the referent and not on the plural feature of
the grammatical object. But the perception
of a referent event is a cognitive process, not
a linguistic one. Related evidence has been

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
provided by Roger Brown.3 Eve said, "I'm
eating my sweater," thereby producing an
anomaly by violating selection restrictions on
eating. Her utterance was, nonetheless, an
appropriate description of her behavior.
McCawley, however, goes on to argue, in
a way somewhat similar to that of Katz
and Fodor (1963), that the selection restrictions that limit the choices of words
that can occur in a sentence are semantic.
Selectional restrictions are definable solely in terms
of properties of semantic representations and . . .
to determine whether a constituent meets or violates a selectional restriction it is necessary to
examine its semantic representation and nothing
else [McCawley, 1968, p. 135].

For this conclusion to be true, it would

be necessary that the knowledge of the intended referent be semantic information.
However, as was indicated, semantic theories
are not usually construed as theories of
reference. Katz and Fodor (1963) explicitly reject reference by stating that the
knowledge of the world that speakers share
is not capable of being systemized and hence
any theory relying on it is not a serious
model of semantics. McCawley (1968) appears to hedge on this point maintaining
both that selection restrictions are semantic
and that they may rely on nonlinguistic
information.
A second line of evidence of the role of
knowledge of the intended referent in semantic decisions comes from a consideration of
the use of pronouns and reflexives (Chomsky, 1965, 1968; McCawley, 1968). Under
what conditions may a pronoun be substituted for a noun phrase? In the sentences
I bought the apple and I ate the apple
I bought the apple and I ate it
The man killed the man
The man killed himself
the second form of each sentence may occur
if the second noun phrase is identical to the
first noun phrase. But how are we to construe this identity? It cannot be a matter
of simple identity of the lexical entry of,
for example, the man, because one would
3
Roger Brown, personal communication, August 1969.

259

get the reflexive form even if in fact the

man were a different man. Chomsky
(1965), therefore, added the qualification
that the noun phrases must be marked by
the same index. An index would be an
identifying mark attached to the noun
phrase by the base component of the grammar. Before a pronoun or a reflexive could
be substituted, the index for the two noun
phrases would have to be identical. McCawley (1968) has importantly extended
this argument by showing that the markers
that correspond to the noun phrase the
man, such as human, male, adult, that are
presumably designated by the index, are
neither syntactic, that is, provided by the
base structure, nor semantic, that is, provided by the lexical entry. Rather, the index
that assures the identity of the two noun
phrases the man is the fact that it refers to
or has the same intended referent. McCawley also gives examples to show that in
English the choice between such pronouns
as he, she, and it, or between who and
which frequently depends not on the lexical
items in the noun phrase but on the intended
referent of the noun phrase (p. 139). Again
then, the semantic decision is based on cognition, the knowledge of the intended referent, not on the rules internal to language.
Third, the argument may be extended to
show that not only do selection restrictions
and indexes require a knowledge of the intended referents, but also the problems that
Katz and Fodor (1963) took to be critical
for a semantic theorythe judgment of ambiguity, anomaly, and paraphraseare
equally dependent on knowledge of the intended referent.
Consider the ambiguous sentence provided by Katz and Fodor (1963), "The
stuff is light," in which "light" may refer to
either color or weight. They suggest that
it is disambiguated by elaborating the linguistic context thus, "The stuff is light
enough to carry," because one of the semantic markers on "carry" is compatible with
(selects) the meaning of "light" having a
marker for weight but not one having a
marker for brightness.

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DAVID R. OLSON

However, a perceived context (knowledge

of the referent) may have precisely the same
effect. Thus, if one offers to help someone
with his parcels and hears the original sentence, it is already unambiguous. We suggest that Katz and Fodor's elaborated sentence does precisely this. The sentence specifies a perceptual context which then has
the effect of eliminating one of the alternatives (light, color), thereby disambiguating
the sentence. If this is true, it follows that
ambiguity is a function of the perceived
alternatives to the intended referent, not of
the rules of language. To generalize, an
ambiguous sentence is one that, within the
alternatives established by the intent of the
speaker, leaves more than one alternative
available, that is, fails to specify the intended
referent.
A more convincing case can be made by
showing that generally accepted "unambiguous" sentences may or may not be ambiguous depending on the perceived context.
Suppose an irate parent asks a bystander,
"Who threw the ball through my window?"
A reply, "The boy threw the ball," is ambiguous if there are two boys on the street,
whereas it may be unambiguous if there is
only one boy and one girl on the street.
The "boy" and the "light" cases could be
differentiated on the basis of the intuition
that the latter has two "meanings." Whether
the distinction has some utility in accounting
for the ambiguity of an utterance remains
to be seen. Recall that "light" is ambiguous
only as long as it can specify more than one
alternative in precisely the same way as
"boy" is ambiguous only if it can specify
more than one alternativeprovided that
those alternatives are within or relevant to
the intent of the speaker or the requirements
of the listener.
In the same way, of the sentences
The Emperor built the bridge
Napoleon built the bridge
Napoleon, the Emperor of France, built
the bridge
only the third may be unambiguous if there
is some possibility to the listener that the
builder of the bridge was either Constan-

tine or the listener's neighbor, Napoleon

Schwartz.
It follows that it is impossible to specify
the meaning of a word or sentence unambiguously unless one knows the context
and hence the set of alternative referents
being entertained by the listener.
A parallel difficulty exists for the problem
of paraphrase. In some contexts, "The tall
tree is a spruce" may be a paraphrase of
"The tree on the left is a spruce," if the
tall tree is on the left. In other contexts
or for different purposes, it may not be a
paraphrase. Obviously, knowledge of the
semantic properties of "tall" could not have
generated or determined the choice of "left."
The general rule for the acceptability of a
paraphrase would be very similar to that we
have given for ambiguity; a paraphrase is
an utterance which specifies the same intended referent as the statement for which
it is substituted. We shall return to this
point.
As to anomalous sentences such as, "The
honest snowball . . . ," the case may be
made that such anomalies are less a function of incompatible semantic components
than of the limits of experience or imagination. Are the following anomalous?
He guessed thoughtfully
The flying horse . . .
Colorless green ideas . . .
It is reasonable to suggest that anomaly
depends on the experience and imagination
of the listener. Imagination would here be
construed as the ability to intellectually
rearrange our perceptual experience. A
sentence is anomalous if the listener cannot
imagine a context in which that sentence
would specify an intended referent. Anomaly is, therefore, hypothesized to be a function of real or imagined knowledge of
referents, not of the markers on the lexical
items in the dictionary.
Fourth, the role of cognition or knowledge of intended referents in semantic decisions may be extended to the meanings of
lexical items themselves. Consider the hypothesis that the semantic features or components that are presumed to make up the

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
meaning of a word are not themselves given
by the dictionary entry but are generated in
the course of differentiating perceived referents. The meaning of the word horse, as
given by the Oxford dictionary, includes
such things as quadruped, mammal, and
domesticated. However, by considering a
horse in an unusual context, other properties,
not listed in the dictionary, may become distinguishing. Thus, if a person is asked to
differentiate between a whale and a horse,
an appropriate definition would be "The
horse is the terrestrial one."
The feature "terrestrial" may now be
considered to be part of the definition of
horse; note, however, that the marker
"terrestrial" is not given by the dictionary
but rather by the speaker's knowledge of
whales and horses. Anything else the
speaker knows that will permit their differentiation may be used as if it were part of
the meaning of the word. The ones that
have been frequently used have been listed
in a published dictionary but that is a poor
indication of what a speaker knows or how
he uses the language. Quine (1953) pointed
out the limitations of working from the dictionary meaning of a word: "We have so
frequently to content ourselves with a lame
partial synonym plus stage directions [p.
58]."
A fifth, and final, line of evidence for
the role of psychological knowledge in making semantic decisions comes from a consideration of ostensive definitions, the defining of a word by pointing to its referent.
Some words, such as round or black, can
be defined only in this way; in other cases,
it appears to be optional. For example, in
some way pointing to a zebra and saying,
"That is a zebra" is equivalent to the statement, "A zebra is an animal like a horse
with stripes.'' In the case of the ostensive
definition, it is clear that the information,
which in another context would be called a
semantic marker (having stripes), is in fact
perceptual information. Hence, the perception of a referent in terms of distinguishing
features provides the meaning for the word,
at least in this case. The inference that
perceptual knowledge is the basis of seman-

261

tic meaning in most, if not all cases, shall

be examined presently.
This line of reasoning leads us to conclude that semantic decisions are determined
not by the syntactic or semantic markers
that are exclusively a part of the linguistic
system, but rather on the basis of the
language user's knowledge of the perceived
and intended referent. In view of this fact,
the dictionary as the hypothesized repository
of such semantic information would be unnecessary. That is, the dictionary metaphor
for semantic theory based on semantic
markers or meaning components attached
to lexical entries may be seriously misconstrued. It has been shown that the critical
information for semantic decisions is cognitive, that is, the knowledge of intended
referents.
The constraints that hold between words
independently of the intended referent, such
as agreement in tense and number as in the
sentences
The
The
The
The

Liberals were criticized

Party was criticized
Liberals criticized ^mselves
Party criticized itself

can be accounted for by the surface syntactic structure. Hence, we are led to hypothesize that the base structure of language has been postulated unnecessarily,
presumably because of an inadequate account
of cognition, the knowledge of referents.
This suggestion has been made independently by McCawley (1968) but for similar
reasons. We shall return to this point.
The suggestion that the speaker's knowledge of the intended referent provides the
basis for semantic decisions is unsatisfactory
in at least two ways. The first is illustrated
in the earlier discussion of pronominalization.
In some cases where two noun phrases have
the same intended referent such as, "Batman
was told that Bruce Wayne would be killed,"
"Mr. Trudeau was told that the Prime
Minister would be invited," the substitution
of a pronoun for the second noun phrase may
not be appropriate. Hence, it is not simply
a matter of identity of intended referents;
one referent may have many names. Second,

262

DAVID R. OLSON

an account of semantics implicating, as it

does, word-referent relationships would require an explicit theory of that relationship.
We turn then to the attempts to formulate
a theory of word-referent relations or a
theory of reference, a problem that has been
attacked more by philosophers and psychologists than by linguists.
THEORIES OF REFERENCE: WORD-OBJECT
RELATIONSHIPS
At the simplest level, a word is not part
of a referent such that words have meaning
in and of themselves; this mistaken belief
is implied both by such statements as "The
Divine is rightly so called," and by the
attribution of occult powers to words
(Frazer, 1911-1936).
An equally false if more popular view
of the relation between words and things is
the assumption that "things have names"
or "objects have labels." Even theories that
emphasize the mediating role of meaning
frequently slip into the oversimplified assumption of a link between a name and an
object. Thus, Stern (1914) argued that
the greatest discovery a child can make is
that each thing has a name,
the requirement that each object of whatever kind
have its name may be considered a true generalization made by the childpossibly his first [p. 110].

We find the same assertion carried over into

Vygotsky (1962) and Ausubel (1968).
Everything has many names and every
name "has" many things, and a theory of
reference must specify how and why this is
the case. Presumably something mediates
between the word and the thing; this mediator is called meaning. Ogden and Richards' (1923) famous analysis, which appears
to have provided the model for most contemporary theories, suggested the three components shown in Figure 1. The mediating
component, called reference or meaning, is
considered to be the experience of perceiving
referents or objects in a context. Their
paradigm case is that of a chicken which
after having found that a particular striped
caterpillar tastes bad eats no more caterpillars bearing similar stripes. As in the
Pavlovian model, one cue, the stripes, acts

REFERENCE (Meaning)

SIGNS

REFERENTS

(Words, Perceptual
Codes, Etc.)

(Objects and Events)

FIG. 1. Ogden and Richards' conception of the

relation between words and referents.

as a sign setting up expectancies based on

the previously experienced context and becomes the meaning or reference of the sign.
Ogden and Richards' (1923) theory has
several advantages. It implies a theory of
knowledge"try as we may we cannot go
beyond reference in the way of knowledge
[p. 82]," "Propositions are references [p.
74]"; a theory of language"To make a
statement is to symbolize a reference [p.
82]"; and a theory of trutha reference is
true if the expectancies implied by the context are fulfilled. Reichenbach's (1951)
more elaborate verifiability theory of meaning rests on similar premises.
Differentiating referents from references
(meaning) assists in the solution of one
problem encountered earlier in the discussion of pronominalization. Ogden and
Richards point out that while the signs "The
King of England" and "the owner of Buckingham Palace" may have the same referent,
they do not symbolize the same reference, as
different psychological contexts are involved
in the two cases (p. 92).
But this last case indicates the major
limitation of this theory; it is the inability
to specify the context that is activated by a
sign such as a word. As reference is a
psychological context resulting from experience, "it is unlikely that any two references
will be strictly similar [p. 90]." While
they recommend a further analysis of context operative in reference, it is difficult even
to imagine how an experienced context
could call for the utterance "The King of
England" rather than "the owner of Buckingham Palace" or for the utterance "The

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
cat ... " rather than "The white cat ... "
or "The animal . . . ." Similarly, they argue
that a statement is a symbolization of a
reference (p. 82) and reference may more
or less approximate the structure of the
referents; that is, ideas may correspond more
or less to the world. However, any one
reference may be symbolized in more than
one way and Ogden and Richards give little
help in specifying how one chooses one way
rather than another. They do, however, indicate that the objective in communication
is to arrive at the same referent. This criterion would be used to assess the adequacy
of a statement and the equality or synonymy
of a paraphrase.
The relativity of language was indicated
by Ogden and Richards' Fourth Canon"a
symbol refers to what it is actually used to
refer to [p. 193]"and in their theory of
definition"all definitions are essentially ad
hoc [p. 111]." Words are relevant to some
purpose or situation, and consequently are
applicable only over a restricted field or
"universe of discourse [p. 111]." This
point was greatly expanded by Wittgenstein's (1958) construal of language as a
language game, a game played within certain
rules permitting and forbidding certain
moves, which is played in some context for
some purpose.
The implication of this assumption is that
one can read things into language unnecessarily such as "meaning" or "thinking" or
"asserting." Rather, Wittgenstein insists
that language is a tool that may be used for
certain purposes and these uses vary for
each language game. Thus, it becomes impossible to give "the meaning" of a word
that holds in all contexts because these contexts are continuously changing; the meaning is inconsistent outside the framework of
the particular game involved. Thus, "the
meaning of a word is its use in the language
[p. 20]." "And the meaning of a name
is sometimes explained by pointing to its
bearer [p. 21]." Again, "nothing has so
far been done when a thing has been named.
It has not even got a name except in the
language game [p. 24]." We draw boundaries between events and name them only

263

for some special purpose. That purpose

specifies our language game. Thus, no description describes facts as they really are.
Similarly, defining a word in terms of
some more basic explanation, as a dictionary
normally does, is not the basic paradigm of
the language. None stands in need of explaining by more basic terms unless it is
required in some specific case to avoid misunderstanding. Only in that case, terms
may require reformulation until those playing the game reach agreement (p. 41).
The implication of Wittgenstein's analysis
is that the problem of meaning is best formulated through "use" in a language game.
We shall adopt the point that words do not
"mean" referents or stand for referents,
they have a usethey specify perceived
events relative to a set of alternatives; they
provide information.
Brown (1958) extends the point made by
Ogden and Richards and by Wittgenstein
to the effect that naming is relative and reflects both the context of the utterance and
the use in the culture. Brown finds that
the common name for an object differentiates
an object at the level of usual utility. He
states,
objects are most commonly assigned to the category that reminds us of the attributes that are
important for its most common use. To call a
ball an object or a sphere or a thing is entirely
too uninformative. To call it a baseball is more
informative than calling it a ball but the longer
word is not often necessary because the kind of
ball intended can usually be recovered from context [pp. 284-285].

The most important point is that the

choice of a name then reflects the most frequent differentiations that must be made by
the language user. Even this point, however, does not go far enough. To pursue
Brown's example, in some contexts a ball
may be called an object or a sphere or a
thing, and a theory of semantics would have
to specify those contexts. Thus, if there
were two balls in the visual field, one rough
and the other smooth, it would be entirely
appropriate to say, "Give me the smooth
one." If there were several objects in the
visual field, but only onethe ball, the intended referentwas smooth, it would be

264

DAVID R, OLSON

appropriate to say, "Give me the smooth

thing."
Several examples have been provided of
how the context determines the manner in
which an "intended referent" is encoded in
language. It remains to formulate the general rules or the theory lying behind these
examples.
A COGNITIVE THEORY OF SEMANTICS
The conclusion of the first section of this
paper was that a theory of semantics was
necessarily dependent on the knowledge of
the intended referent. The conclusion of
the second section was that theories of
reference or meaning were not precise
enough nor adequate in other ways to serve
as a theory of semantics; they failed, for
example, to specify the relations of the perceived referent in a context to the restrictions that are imposed on the related utterance. The following is an attempt to outline that relation in terms of a cognitive
theory of semantics.
The relation of an utterance to an intended referent can best be illustrated by a
paradigm case.4 A gold star is placed under
a small, wooden block. A speaker who saw
this act is then asked to tell a listener, who
did not see the act, where the gold star is.
In every case, the star is placed under the
same block, a small, round, white, . . . , one.
However, in the first case there is one alternative block present, a small, round, black,
one. In the second case there is a different
alternative block present, a small, square,
white,
. , one. In a third case there are
three alternative blocks present, a round
black one, a square black one, and a square
white one. These three cases are shown in
Figure 2.
In these situations, the speaker would say
the following for Case 1: "It's under the
white one"; for Case 2: "It's under the
round one"; for Case 3: "It's under the
round, white one."
The implications of this paradigm case
now are examined in the form of a set of
propositions.
4
This experiment has been conducted with young
children by William Ford, and will be reported
elsewhere in detail.

Event

Case I

Case Z

Case 3

Case 4

o
o
o
o

Alternative

Utterance

...the white one

D0B

...the round one

.. the round ,
white one

...(look under )
the round, white,
wooden block
that is about one
inch across ,..

FIG. 2. The relation of an utterance to an

intended referent.

Word-Referent Relationships
1. Words do not name things. In the
paradigm case the thing is a block, yet few
if any of the speakers so designate it.
2. Words do not name intended referents.
In the paradigm case, the gold star is under
the same block, the same intended referent,
yet the utterances differ in each case. The
conclusion is that words designate, signal,
or specify an intended referent relative to
the set of alternatives from which it must
be differentiated. In the language of information theory, we would say that statements reduce alternatives or uncertainty.
The term "information" shall be used for
any perceptual or linguistic cue that reduces
the number of alternatives to the intended
referent. The meaning of an utterance is,
therefore, the information provided by the
utterance to a listener. Thus, the meaning
of an utterance is dependent on the context
of alternatives. In some cases, a single
phoneme could have meaning if it permits
the choice between alternatives (Lyons,
1968). It is now possible to revise the conception of an ostensive definition. An ostensive definition is given, not simply by pointing to a referent, but by indicating the
referent relative to a set of alternatives.
3. An utterance does not exhaust the potential features of the perceived referent.
Thus, in the paradigm case, none of the
speakers say wooden, or physical, object;
they specify the object to the level required
by the listener to differentiate the intended

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
referent from the alternatives. If the set of
alternatives were changed, the utterance
would be changed, perhaps to include those
adjectives. In general, it would seem to be
the case that an utterance never exhausts all
the possibilities of the perceived referent.
One would find new properties of any event
as long as the event was put among different
sets of alternatives. Recall the earlier illustration of the horse contrasted with the
whale in which case a defining character of
the horse becomes "terrestrial," a feature
that has not up to this time been included
in the dictionary. Since not all the potential
information of the referent as perceived is
signaled by a word, we conclude that words
(or utterances) neither symbolize, stand for,
nor represent referents, objects, or events.
They serve rather to differentiate some perceived event from some set of alternatives.
How this partitioning is accomplished would
require extensive analysis, but it may be
suggested that it is accomplished on the
basis of some distinguishing feature or features. As a general point, it may be argued
that the view that an utterance partitions a
set of alternatives is equivalent to the view
that utterances specify different aspects or
distinguishing features of the perceived
referent. The advantage of this translation
in this case is that these features are presumably what in other contexts would be
called semantic markers. The limitation of
the translation is that if perceptual distinguishing features may be taken as a model,
then that set of features is not exhaustive,
with new features becoming distinguished
as the perceived event is set among a new
context of alternatives.
4. Having defined meaning as information that permits a choice or differentiation
among alternatives, it becomes possible to
state the advantages of words over the direct
perception of events. A word or an utterance, since it not only specifies the perceived
referent but also the set of excluded alternatives, contains more information than the
simple perception of the event itself. The
exception to this is the case in which the perception of the event occurs in the context
of all of the alternatives from which it is

265

to be subsequently differentiated. Although

the complete elaboration of this point would
take us too deeply into perceptual theory,
the point may be simply illustrated by reference to the paradigm case. Suppose that
the listener is not shown the set of alternatives from which he is to choose the particular block hiding the gold star. In one
case he is simply shown the critical block,
in the other case he is told that the star is
under the white one. In the first case, the
subject would note perhaps a half-dozen
features of the critical block with no assurance that he has noticed the critical feature
on which the recognition is to be basedit
may, for example, involve the prominence
of the grain or the precise way in which it
is handled by the experimenter. In other
words, the subject has no indication of what
the alternatives are. In the second case,
the listener knows both that the critical object will be white and that all of the alternatives must be black (or nonwhite). That
is, in this last case the listener knows both
the event and the alternatives; in the first
case he knows only the event and must guess
at the alternatives. To paraphrase, an appropriate utterance indicates which cues or
features are critical, while a picture does
not. Therefore, there is more information
in an utterance than in the perception of an
event out of context. This again illustrates
the point made earlierthat a word specifies
a perceived referent relative to a set of
alternatives.
This point would appear to account for
some of the conflicting experimental results
obtained in studies of the use of words
versus pictures in conceptual learning and
on pictorial versus verbal paired associates.
A picture is ambiguous; when looking at a
picture of a boat, you don't know whether
to attend to its color, size, style, state of
repair, and so onwhile a word such as
black or large tends not to be ambiguous.
Just how this ambiguity affects learning and
recall is not completely clear. It seems that
the greater uncertainty of a picture relative
to a word results in longer recognition time
(Fraisse, 1969) and in superior recall and
paired-associate learning (Paivio, 1969).

266

DAVID R. OLSON

That same uncertainty makes pictures less

useful in a transfer task (Johnson, 1969)
and in concept-formation tasks (Runquist &
Hutt, 1961). Martin (1968) has made a
related point in showing that the variable
encodability, the tendency for some stimuli
to be attended, coded, or apprehended in
more than one way, accounts for some of the
effects of meaningfulness on the rate of
paired-associate learning. In general, it may
be that both high uncertainty and high information result in good recall and pairedassociate learning; but only high information results in good transfer and concept
formation. In any case, the availability of
more information in one experimental condition than in the other would seriously affect the results.
Sentence Elaboration
As was mentioned above, no utterance
ever exhausts all the possibilities of a referent. What then determines the extent to
which an utterance is elaborated? In general, a sentence, or any sentence constituent,
is elaborated to the extent necessary to differentiate the alternatives among which the
listener must choose (Osgood, 1968). In
the paradigm case when there were two alternatives, the speaker said, "The white
one." When there were four alternatives,
the speaker said, "The round white one."
This generalization is complicated by three
factors. First, speakers tend to use a degree
of redundancy, perhaps for the benefit of the
listenera subject that warrants further
study. Second, speakers tend to use a familiar noun even if it contains more information than may be required. As Brown
(1958) pointed out, things tend to be called
by a name that corresponds to the most frequent and useful level for differentiating
objects. Thus, speakers frequently call a
cat a "cat," even if for informative purposes
"animal" would be sufficient. Third, the
level to which an utterance is differentiated
depends on the intent of the speaker. No
utterance ever differentiates an intended
referent from all possible alternatives but
only from those among which the speaker
infers that the listener must choose in the

present context, for the purpose of that

particular "language game." It appears to
be the case that the speaker makes minimal
assumptions about the range of alternatives
to be differentiated. A linguistic code that
is suited to the case in which the speaker
assumes a small set of alternatives among
which the listener must differentiate has
been called a "restricted code" by Bernstein
(1964). In the present paradigm case, the
speaker simply provides the necessary information to differentiate the alternatives he
has seenhe does not try to imagine all the
possible alternatives from which the intended
referent could be differentiated in all contexts. In other contexts, in talking about
events where the alternatives are not perceptually present, the speaker must make
an estimate of these alternatives both in the
light of the preceding utterances in the discourse and from the experience of the
listener.
Pronominalisation
Next, consider as a general rule for
pronominalization that a pronoun may replace any constituent in which there is no
information (relative to the intent of the
speaker). Thus, in the present example,
the speaker says, " . . . the white one," instead of the white block because block contains no information, that is, it is redundant
in that all of the objects are blocks. In the
same way, the entire noun phrase, "The gold
star . . . ," is replaced by "It . . . " because
there is no information in the elaborated
sentence, the listener already knowing what
was being hidden. Similarly, a pronoun
such as "this" may replace an entire sentence or paragraph if it provides no information.
There are several restrictions on the form
of the pronoun, such as the choice between
he, she, and it, between who and which,
between it and they, that are likely determined by the surface structure of the sentence in the same way that agreement between subject and verb is produced by the
surface structure as was illustrated earlier:
"The Liberals were criticized"; "The Party
was criticized." The surface structure may

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
also determine whether some pronouns may
be deleted or must be retained. In the
present paradigm case, ". . . the black one,"
one was retained as a place holder in the
surface structure even if it contained no information. In other languages with a different surface structure, such as French, for
example, the utterance would simply be
"C'est sous le blanc."
Another example comes from Whorf
(1956). In describing a flash of light
We are obliged to say "it flashed" or "a light
flashed," setting up an actor it, or a light, to perform what we call an action, flash. But the flashing and the light are the same; there is no thing
which does something, and no doing, Hopi says
only rephi [p. 262-263],

The pronoun is retained because of the requirements of the surface structure of

English. Thus, in general it appears to be
the case that constituents containing no information may be replaced by a pronoun.
The pronoun is retained as a place holder
rather than deleted because of the requirements of the surface structure. In all cases,
however, it is the speaker's knowledge of
the informativeness of the phrase that determines if it can be replaced by a pronoun.
Reconsider the case in which the two nonidentical noun phrases have the same intended referent, such as "Mr. Trudeau was
told that the Prime Minister was invited to
dinner." It is clear that ordinarily the two
noun phrases contain different information,
that is, they specify the referent relative to
different sets of alternatives even if they
have the same intended referent. That is,
they partition alternatives differently, they
exclude different sets of alternatives. In
some cases where that additional information
is irrelevant to the intent of the speaker, if
for example, one is interested only that Mr.
Trudeau come to dinner, then a substitution
of a pronoun would be permissible. Note,
however, that if that was the intention, the
original sentence could not have been generated in the first place. The sentence will
contain only the information relative to the
intent of the speaker (plus some redundancy) .
This account of pronominalization is no
different in principle from any noun phrase

267

in which some or all of the information can

be recovered from the perceived or linguistic
context. Thus, in some contexts, "The
white cat" may be replaced by "The cat" or
even "It."
But this line of argument on pronominalization has implications for transformational theory that postulates both surface
and deep syntactic structures. It has been
indicated that the rules underlying pronominalization are first of all cognitive and involve the information about the intended
referents, and second, are included and modified to meet the rules of the surface syntactic structure. At least some of the
functions that are normally attributed to the
deep structure of language are carried out
by operations that are not linguistic, but
rather cognitive. Attributing these functions to a deep linguistic structure is, therefore, redundant.
Ambiguity, Synonymy, and Paraphrase
As was indicated in the earlier discussion,
these problems are to be dealt with simply
by determining whether the intended referent has been specified by the utterance; an
utterance leaving more than one alternative
available is ambiguous. Thus a statement,
"It's under the white one," when there are
two white ones, one round and one square,
is ambiguous.
A synonym is a word that specifies the
same intended referent. As the set of alternatives from which that referent must be
differentiated is almost continuously changing, there are few, if any, absolute synonyms
(except perhaps in the case where some
shorthand form replaces a longer form).
The low degree of synonymy parallels the
fact that the meaning of a word is also continuously changing. That is, as was discussed earlier, the word is used to partition
some different alternatives in virtually every
case. If meaning is, therefore, not absolute,
synonymy is not absolute either. Synonymy
is, therefore, judged in each case in terms
of whether the same alternative or intended
referent is specified by the word or the utterance. Thus, "I took your money" is synonymous with "I took the five dollars" if

268

DAVID R. OLSON

the five dollars is your money. More formal

conceptions of synonymy such as between
"cow" and "domestic, milk-producing animal," would, from the present point of view,
be considered as specifying the same intended referent in a very large number but
not all contexts of alternatives. The latter,
for example, would not exclude goats. The
most general synonyms appear to bear a
special class-inclusion relationship, such as
animal-cat, but the reasons for the relation
are not clear, at least to the author.
Paraphrase may be considered from the
same point of view. It appears that it differs from synonymy only in that no consideration is given to the likelihood that a
paraphrase would hold over a large number
of contexts. Thus, paraphrase would seem
to be context specific more than synonymy
while relying on the same principle, that is,
arriving at the same intended referent by
means of excluding or differentiating different sets of alternatives.
Nonperceptual Alternatives
To this point, the paradigm case and inferences drawn in this article reflect primarily the situation in which the alternatives
among which a speaker is to differentiate are
perceptually present. Not all language is
about perceived events and certainly all language does not occur in the immediate context of the perceived event and its alternatives. The author suggests that the primary
extension of the account to these events
would be to hypothesize that the speaker
makes his semantic decisions on the basis of
inferred alternatives.
Consider an extension of the paradigm
case to the situation in which the speaker
is shown only the specific white, wooden,
round, . . . , block being placed on top of
the gold star, that is, he is not shown the
alternatives. He is then told that his listener
has a large number of objects in front of
him but that the star is under the object that
is identical to the one he has seen. In this
case, Case 4, an utterance of the form "Look
under the round, white, wooden block that is
about one inch across . . . " would be expected. In this case, the speaker instead of

differentiating the event from the perceived

alternatives, generates an utterance which
will differentiate the object from a large
set of inferred alternatives. This case is
somewhat more like that employed in normal conversation. The speaker has to infer
what the alternatives being entertained by
the listener are. If his utterance fails to
reduce these alternatives for the listener, the
speaker would expect some feedback from
the listener which he would then use in
order to arrive at an agreement on the intended referent. Hence, the alternatives
among which an utterance is to differentiate
can as easily be imaginary, as immediately
or directly perceived. It follows, too, that
the elaboration of an utterance or a description is a function of the size of the set of
alternatives that the speaker infers the
listener must choose among. The speaker's
set of inferred alternatives will be limited
by his own experience. If the speaker wants
the listener to differentiate an object from
a large set of alternatives, the speaker will
use a very large set of adjectives. The most
exaggerated use of this technique, which has
the effect of making the object appear unique,
is found in antique auction catalogues:
"Antique hand carved oak rosewood inlaid
marble pedestaled stately Queen Anne China
cabinet"; and in psychological descriptions:
"human autonomic classical differential trace
conditioning."
It remains an important problem to examine the extent to which the account proposed here can be applied to semantic decisions involving such words as good, angel,
mind, and zero for which the referent is not
directly perceived or for which no referent
exists. It would be a mistake to infer that
the analysis proposed here applies only to
semantic decisions in the context of physically present and directly perceived referents
simply because most of the examples presented here have been of that type. In the
first place, even simple "naming" cannot be
carried out without the speaker making some
assessment of the set of alternatives from
which the referent is to be differentiated.
That is, the semantic decision is a highly
abstract process that goes well beyond the

269

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
sense data gathered from the referent. Second, even the "simple" perceptual process is
not immediate but rather involves a large
component of expectancies and inferred alternatives (Bruner, 1957; Garner, 1966;
Sokolov, 1969). That is, even perception
involves the nonpresent. Third, already
considered have been some cases in which
the intended referent was neither present
nor obvious, such as "Prime Minister";
other cases, such as walk/run, walk/drive,
mind/body, shall be considered presently.
It also remains to be seen whether or not
'the model presented here would actually
help in the solution of such a problem as the
meaning of the word "good," a problem
that has intrigued philosophers for so long
(Katz, 1964). It is an appropriate inference from the model that perceptual information, cognition, underlies semantic decisions, and that perceptual information is
gathered by experience in the referential
world.
Syntactic Considerations
First, some of the analyses have proceeded
on the basis of a speaker's choice of a single
word. What then is the syntactic status of a
single word? It is hypothesized that the
appropriate level of analysis is a message
a message being construed as any utterance
that specifies the event relative to the set
of alternatives. A single word is then an
utterance in which all the other sentence
constituents are assumed or agreed on and
hence have been replaced by pronouns or
simply deleted. An example of this is
Wittgenstein's language game in which the
builder simply calls out "Block," instead of
"Please give me a block, not a pillar, slab,
or beam." In other words, the present
analysis of a single word should be construed as the analysis of message. In other
cases, a single phoneme, if it partitions
alternatives to the intended referent, may be
considered as a message (Lyons, 1968).
Second, it is important to show that the
alternatives from which the intended referent
is to be differentiated determines semantic
decisions not only for the adjectives relied
on in the paradigm case, but also for other

syntactic classes such as nouns, verbs, or

functors. In the context of two automobiles,
the utterance "It is in the car" is ambiguous,
while "It is in the Chevrolet" is not, if
one of them is not a Chevrolet. The two
nouns in this case differentiate an object for
different sets of alternatives. Similarly,
verbs may be used to differentiate alternatives. To say "He walked to work" may
be ambiguous if the listener does not know
what the speaker has intended to partition
by the use of the word walk. In one case, it
may mean walk as opposed to drive, in another case walk as opposed to run. Depending on the alternatives entertained by the
listener and those from which the speaker
intends to differentiate the referent event,
the sentence would be either ambiguous or
unambiguous.
Once a speaker has decided on the intended referent and the perceived or inferred
alternatives from which he must differentiate
it, he has a wide range of syntactic alternatives for arranging that information. The
question of which decisions are optional and
which are obligatory remains as an important
syntactic problem. One of the constraints
on these alternatives comes from such conceptions as the topic-comment model or its
refinements in terms of theme-rheme and
the given-new distinctions drawn by the
Prague School of Linguistics (Firbas, 1964;
Vachek, 1966) and by Halliday (1967) in
which the old or assumed or agreed information is put into the first noun phrase (NP)
and perhaps replaced by a pronoun with
the new information being placed in the
verb phrase (VP), thus,
Bill had a dog
It died

NP + VP
/
NP + VP

That made him sad

NP + VP.

But it is permissible in English to pack all

of that information into either the noun
phase or the verb phase or into a clause:
Bill's dog died so he is sad.
Bill is sad because his dog died.
On some occasions, some of the information

270

DAVID R. OLSON

may be put either into a verb or into a

noun phase as in
The horse made a jump.
The horse jumped.
The set of options may also be restricted
by such factors as style, as Joos (1961) has
pointed out, and by performative implications, as Austin (1962) has shown.
However, from the present point of view,
the major invariant in all the semantic and
syntactic options is the information transmitted about the intended referent and the
alternatives from which it is to be differentiated. Again, we are led to conjecture
that it is this information that may be considered as the deep structure of the language.
Related Conjectures
Recognition of the fact that words serve
to partition sets of alternatives assists in
some other problems as well. The word
"cat" partitions a different set of alternatives (cat/dog/rabbit . . . ) than does the
word animal (animal/plant . . . ; animal/
man . . . ; animal/fish . . . ; animal/bird
. . . ). As different sets of alternatives are
partitioned in each case, different distinguishing features are relevant in each case. This
in itself would account for Collins and
Quillian's (1969) interesting finding that it
is easier to verify that "A canary can sing"
than "A canary can fly"; singing is a feature relevant to the alternatives partitioned
by canary (canary/sparrow/robin . . . ),
while fly is a feature relevant to the alternatives partitioned by the word bird (bird/
animal/insect/fish . . . ).
In studying a new language, one of the
first tasks would be to find out what the
speaker is partitioning by the use of a word
or an utterance. This would eliminate some
of the unsatisfactory inferences drawn by
Levy-Bruhl (1922). If a culture has many
words for snow but has no general word, or
if it uses a different word to describe walking depending on the context, that is an
indication of the differentiations a culture
finds useful, not of the conceptual level of
the people.
Philosophical inquiry, such as that undertaken by Snell (1960) into the origins of

the concept of mind, would be facilitated if

the aspect of the use of language considered
here were kept in mind. Snell traces the
development of the superordinate concept of
mind as a class-inclusive term for psyche,
thymos, and noos. What he overlooks is
that Heraclitus invented the term not simply
as a superordinate but to contrast with a
new alternative. Snell points out that the
concept of body originated about the same
time, but he fails to see that the new use
of the word mind was to contrast it with or
differentiate it from body. To know the use
of a word, then, is not to know only what
it includes, but also what is excluded or
partitioned by the word.5
In this article, semantics has been examined in terms of the knowledge of the intended referents, and arguments that this
knowledge is cognitive, involving the percept of the intended referent relative to a
set of alternatives, have been provided. The
meaning of a word is, therefore, a perceptual
event, not a response event, as Osgood
(1968) and others have maintained; understanding a sentence causes the restructuring
of one's perceptual information. It has also
been shown that the adoption of this point
of view can assist in the solution of a set of
semantic problems, including synonymy,
paraphrase, and ambiguity. Further, it is
essentially an oppositional theory (Ogden,
1932) in that any word or utterance signals
an event relative to a set of excluded alternatives; thus, semantics may be viewed as
possessing a structure similar to that of
phonology.
There remain three more critical problems
that are directly relevant to a cognitive
theory of semantics. The first is the relation between the comprehension of an utterance and the perception of an event. It has
been indicated here how the speaker chooses
5
A similar case has been brought to my attention by S. Pagliuso. To the Greeks, the word Greek
partitioned Greeks/Barbarians, not, as it did for
others, Civilized/Barbarians. Thus, a non-Greek,
no matter how civilized or erudite, may be asked,
"Are you a Barbarian?" to which he of course
replies, "No, I'm not a Barbarian." "Are you a
Greek then?"
"No."
"Well then you're a
Barbarian."

271

THEORY OF SEMANTICS
a word to differentiate an event from a set
of alternatives; the meaning of the word is
its use in partitioning a set of alternatives.
On the other hand, Garner (1966) has
shown that an event is perceived in terms of
the set of alternatives from which it is
differentiated. Moreover, as was suggested
above, it is plausible that these alternatives
have their effect by determining which set
of features will be distinguishing (Gibson,
1965; Kinsbourne & Hartley, 1969; Smith,
in press). Both of these cognitive systems,
language and perception, then appear to involve search for features which will distinguish an event from the perceived or inferred alternatives. However, can it be
assumed that the features which distinguish
perceptual alternatives are those that are
used in the language? Certainly not all
features are named. Moreover, we have
considered how the same intended referent
would be encoded in language differently
depending on the contrasting set of alternatives, producing, for example, in one case
"cow" and in another "animal." But does
this imply that the speaker perceived the intended referent differently in the two contexts? Further, both Huttenlocher (1968)
and Osgood (1969) have provided interesting evidence that various grammatical and
semantic effects including transformations
are influenced by the structure of the perceptual situations. I believe it would be
wrong, however, to conclude that the structure of perception and the structure of langUtterance

Cose l

This is a square

Case 2

This is a square

Case 3

This is a square

Case 4

This is a square

Event

a
a
a
a

uage are identical. For one thing, the structure of perception underlies performance in
various media, including drawing and mathematics, not just ordinary language. I have
suggested elsewhere (Olson, 1970) that it
is performatory attempts in various media
which provide the occasion for selecting
further information from the perceptual or
referential world. Important conceptual and
empirical work remains to be done in this
area.
A second important problem is the development of word meaning. An indication of
how this problem could be attacked can be
given by an example. Consider the meaning
of the word square, in the contexts shown
in Figure 3.
For Case 1, the utterance is ambiguous in
that the perception of the square is ambiguous. What coding or what distinguishing features of the object are important in
its being called or recognized as a square?
The closed figure? The four-sided figure?
The ink-drawn figure?
The perception of the square and the
meaning of the word square become more
differentiated, or more informative, when
the square is perceived in the context of
some contrasting alternative, as in Case 2.
The contrasting alternative indicates the distinguishing features in terms of which the
object is to be perceived. The meaning of
the word is now the percept of the square
in terms of that alternative, in this case,
perhaps, "four-sided." A different alternaAlternative

A
O
OAO

Meaning

Ambiquous

4 -sided

Straight -edged

Straight -edged
4 -sided
Symmetric

FIG. 3. The learning of word meaning as a function of

alternatives differentiated.

272

DAVID R. OLSON

tive would have produced a different perception and a different meaning, such as
"straight-edged" in Case 3. The perceptual
knowledge of squares and the meaning of
the word "square" develops as the set of
features increases, thus permitting the differentiating of squares from increasingly
large sets of alternatives, as in Case 4.
Learning a concept through the verbal or
semantic system is simply the converse of
this process. From the sentence, "A square
is a four-sided figure," the child obtains
information both about the square and about
the figures from which it is to be differentiated. Learning concepts ostensively and
learning them verbally are perfectly symmetrical processes. Language has the practical advantage that one need not have immediately available all of the physical alternatives that would be necessary to permit
the child to arrive at the critical distinguishing features.
In general, the problem of the differentiation of word meaning is the same problem
that is sometimes called conceptual development and it warrants much more extensive
and critical study from this point of view.
The third issue, and the one of most concern to the writer, is the implication of this
view of language for the question of the
relationship between language and thought.
A tentative outline of part of the argument
may be given.
First, notice that language is merely the
specification of an intended referent relative
to a set of alternatives. All of that information is perceptual and it was available to
the speaker before he generated the utterance. Therefore, to the speaker there is no
information in an utterance. Speaking is
redundant. Hence, language does not restructure thought.6
Second, however, notice that to the listener
none of these points hold. The listener does
not know what to look at (or to think
about) ; listening to an utterance provides
information both about the intended referent
and the alternatives from which it must be
6

This is not meant to deny the advantages of

such verbal techniques as rehearsal, rhyming
mneumonics, or the use of pencil and paper as
means of extending the functional memory span.

differentiated. There is, therefore, considerable information to the listener in an utterance; the utterance restructures his perception. That is, language influences his
thought. The means by which language influences his thought may be called instruction.
The failure to notice this asymmetry between the speaker and listener in the influence of language on thought has led to
considerable confusion. The advantageous
effects of language were attributed, inappropriately, to the speaker. To account for
this advantageous effect, new levels of cognition were postulated such as symbolic
representation (Ausubel, 1968; Bruner,
1966; Vygotsky, 1962) and verbal mediation (Kendler & Kendler, 1962). From the
point of view developed in this article, such
postulations were unnecessary; rather a
theory of instruction would be required.
But a similar point may be made about
the postulation of deep structure in the language. If the functions usually attributed to
the deep structure, such as the semantic
component and the effects of syntactic selection restrictions, can be accounted for
without implicating the deep linguistic structure, there remains little virtue in postulating such a level. McCawley7 (1968) has
in fact made such a proposal on the basis
of semantic considerations. He suggests
that a grammar may consist of a "formationrule component" which specifies the semantic representations or intended referents and
a "transformational component" which relates these semantic representations to the
surface structure.
The effects of deleting the higher levels
of cognition and the deeper levels of language would simplify considerably the problem of the relation between language and
thought.
7
McCawley gives credit for the idea of abandoning the concept of deep structure to G. Lakoff and
J. R. Ross (rnimeo entitled, "Is deep structure
necessary?" Cambridge, Mass., 1967).

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