ASSIGMENT NO 2

SEMANTICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

CODE NO; 557

Q 1. Sense and Reference

Sense relates to the complex system of relationship that holds between linguistic
elements themselves (mostly the words) it is concerned only with intralinguistics
relations.
Reference deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements, words and
sentences and the nonlinguistic world of experience.
There are cases in the language in which conversation never refers
to different things, and have constant reference. But sometimes a common sentence may
have many references that are called variant references. And two different things ma have
same referent.
About the relationship between sense and reference: the referent of an
expression is often a person or a thing in the world; where as the sense of an expression is
not a thing at all. It is rather difficult to say what sort of entity the sense of an expression
is. It is much easier to say whether or not two expressions have the same sense. The sense
of expressions is abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be
entertained in the mind of a language user. When a person understand fully what is said to
him it is reasonable to say that he grasps the sense of expressions he hears. Thus it
becomes a rule that the expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression
has reference.
Even in different languages, one can talk of
expressions in different dialects of one language as having the same sense. And we have
noticed during our activities that a degree of idealization of the facts about meaning is
there. In short both these notions are central to the study of semantics. The idea of
reference is relatively solid and easy to understand. The idea of sense is more elusive; it is
a bit like electricity, which we all know how to use, without being sure what exactly it is.
Even in semantics it has not been clarified.
Q.2 The word is one of the basic units of semantics, yet there are difficulties.
According to linguistics word is one of the basic units of the semantics yet
none of them agree on the meaning, origin and derivation of the word. And as for as the
dictionaries are concerned they state the meaning of the words and so it is proper to
assume that word is one of the basic unit of semantics. Some words have meanings and
some have none. For example, Boys like to play, in this sentence the meanings of all the
words are clear except to. So one of the grammarians of nineteenth century Henry
Sweet has drew a distinction between the words which have meaning and those which
have not. The words those have meanings he called them full words and the words that
have not meanings at all he called them form words. He tells that it is the only full words
about which we would find meanings and definitions in the dictionary while the form
words are in the grammar and have only grammatical meaning. And that meaning is not
stated in isolation, but only in relation to other words and even sometimes to the whole
sentence. Hence the word is not clearly defined linguistic unit. Because sometimes it has
meaning only in the written context and sometimes in relation to the stress that it has in
the sentence. Here a renowned linguistics Bloomfield offered a solution by suggesting
that the word is the minimum free form the smallest form that may occur in isolation.
But this all depends on what is meant by in isolation. Then he further suggested that we
should look for an element smaller than the word, a unit of meaning the morpheme.
He cites two examples as berry in blackberry or y in Johnny. But later linguistics were
more interested in the status of such words as loved that has two morphemes, but even
there is also a difficulty as there are certain words which have different pattern as in take
and took. And it is usually the same word that is used as a headword in the dictionary. A
technical term for the word in this second sense is lexeme. Lexeme provides us the other
grammatically related word but there is still a difficulty that is about the status of
compounds. Even if we can identify elements within the word without actually
segmenting the word itself, there are still problems about stating the meaning of the
elements. The grammatical elements like grammatical words we considered earlier often
seem to have little or no meaning. Other grammatical elements are almost devoid of
meaning as in Latin and in Greek. There are other elements with in the word that have no
meaning and are not grammatical and in cranberry is cran.
Even more striking is the fact that there are many words in English that are called
PHONAESTHETIC, in which one part, often the initial cluster of consonants, gives an
indication of meaning of a rather special kind. Thus many words beginning with sl- are
slippery, slide, slip, slush, sludge, etc.
And still there are no consistencies about the number of semantics units we may
recognize within a word. And in this connection Ullmann has made a distinction between
Transparent and Opaque words. Transparent words are those whose meaning can be
determined from the meaning of their parts, opaque words those for which this is not
possible. He has cited many examples in this connection. And finally, we must notice that
some whole groups of words must be taken together to establish meaning can be
predicted from the meaning of the words contained in them for example idioms.
Semantically, idioms are single units, but they are single grammatical units like words.
All above considerations suggest that we must give up the idea that the word is the basic
unit of semantics. Bazel commented in this connection that to seek a semantic unit with
in the boundaries of the word simply because these boundaries are clearer than others is
like looking for a lost ball on the lawn simply because the thicket provides poor ground
for such search. But we do not proceed without some kind of lexical unit and the lexeme
seems the most obvious one, even if its definition may on occasion be arbitrary, and it the
meaning of the sequences of words is not always predictable form the lexemes contained
in them.
Q NO: 3 FIVE EXAMPLES AND COMMENTS.
Q.NO.4
Linguistics are not the only scholars who have been interested in semantics. The subject
has widely attracted philosophers and logicians and many experts of other fields as well.
And there is no doubt that linguistics has gained great deal form scholars in all these
disciplines. However their approach to the subject was different than that of linguists
because their aim and objective was different. It would be difficult to state what the
differences were, and it is more usefully simple to consider briefly a few of the topics that
have been suggested.
Some philosophers have suggested that many, if not all, philosophical problems can be
solved by the study of language. It is argued, for instance, that the problems of the nature
of good and evil, of right and wrong, in moral philosophy can be dealt with by seeing the
way in which such words as good are used. The problem of the good that is to say is
seen as the problem of the use of good. This is only marginal interest to the linguists.
Nevertheless, some of the work of such philosophers have had an impact on the linguists,
notably that of Austin with his proposal concerning per formatives and speech acts, of
Strawson on presupposition.
An older and more traditional area of philosophy that has interested linguists is that of
logic. The logicians proposals have ranged from the comparavatively simple syllogism
to highly complex logical syntax. But a word of warning is appropriate here; Logic
makes use of concepts that are found in ordinary language. Nevertheless logical systems
are self coherent and internally consistent models of idealized kind similar to those of
mathematics and are no directly based upon, and there for can not be invalidated by,
observation of natural language. Consequently the linguists should be suspicious of talk
about the logical basis of natural language. The logical systems of the logicians are far
neater and consistent than anything to be found in language. That does not form the basis
of language. But are a highly idealized form of few of is characteristics.
Q NO 5 LIST OF LEXEMES.
ASSIGNMENT NO # S
SEMANTICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
CODE NO 557
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