1.

Introduction

1.1. Definition and the beginnings of semantics

Semantics is the major branch of linguistics which studies meaning communicated through
language (words and sentences). The term 'semantics' is of relatively recent origin, being coined
in the late nineteenth century from a Greek verb meaning 'to signify'. This does not mean that
scholars first turned their attention to the investigation of meaning of words less than a hundred
years ago. On the contrary, from the earliest times down to the present day grammarians have
been interested in the meaning of words and frequently more interested in what words mean than
in their syntactic function. Lyons (1968:400) argues that the practical manifestation of this
interest is the production of innumerable dictionaries throughout ages not only in the west but in
all parts of the world where language has been studied.
In spite of the interest in meaning manifested by philosophers, logicians and
psychologists, linguists doubted that meaning could be studied as objectively and as rigorously as
grammar and phonology and thus semantics came to be neglected and received proper attention
only since the 1960s.
The beginnings of semantics as an independent linguistic discipline go as far back as early
19th century, to the works of the German linguists Ch. C. Reisig and Hermann Paul. Reisig was
the first to formulate the object of study of the new science of meaning which he called
semasiology and conceived the new linguistic branch of study as a historical science studying the
principles governing the evolution of meaning. Hermann Paul also dealt extensively with the
issue of change of meaning.
The ‘birth date’ of semantics as a modern linguistic discipline was marked by the
publication of Essai de sémantique (1897) where the French linguist, Michel Breal, defines
semantics as ‘the science of meanings of words and of the changes in their meanings’. However,
in 1887, that is ten years ahead of Michel Breal, Lazăr Şăineanu published a remarkable book
called Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române. Studii istorice despre tranziţiunea
sensurilor (Essay on Romanian Semasiology. Historical Studies on the Transition of Meanings).
This is one of the first works on semantics to have appeared anywhere. Şăineanu amply used the
contributions of psychology in his attempts at identifying the semantic associations established
among words and the logical laws and affinities governing the evolution of words in particular
and of languages in general.
Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between the two basically different ways in which
language may be viewed, the synchronic or descriptive and the diachronic or historical approach
introduced a new principle of classification of linguistic theories. The next section will make an
overview of the major theoretical trends in semantics.

1.2 An overview of semantic studies

Diachronic or historical semantics

Diachronic or historical semantics developed through the literature on semantic change

which had a golden period between the last twenty years of the 19 th century and the 1940s (the
1880s and the 1940s). One of the longest treaties on semantic change is Gustaf Stern's book
Meaning and Change of Meaning, published in 1931. Stern's principal aim was to establish a
theoretically tenable and practically workable system of classification comprising all known
types of sense change.
Views of semantic changes
Stern’s classification
Stern (1968:162) defines change of meaning as “the habitual modification, among a
comparatively large number of speakers, of the traditional semantic range of a word...to denote
one or more referents which it has not previously denoted or to express a new manner of
apprehending one or more of its referents”. Stern starts by classifying a large number of authentic
sense changes and then formulates a theory to account for the existence of the different classes. In
other words, the classes were established inductively rather than deductively. He analyses
historical instances of sense change mainly with regard to the psychic processes involved and
identifies seven main classes of change: substitution, analogy, shortening, nomination, (regular
transfer), permutation and adequation.
Substitution is a change of meaning due to an external, non-linguistic cause. For instance,
alterations in the design of ships have brought about changes of meaning in the word ship. It once
meant only a sailing vessel; now it can mean a steam-driven vessel of quite different appearance.
Therefore the referents of a word undergo some change so that new referents are added to or
substitute old ones.
Analogy occurs when a word assumes a new meaning on the analogy of some other word with
which it is connected derivationally (e.g. the adjective fast has borrowed the sense “quick” from
the middle English adverb faste), semantically (e.g. the special meaning of low, “non-dogmatic”
in Low Church on the analogy of High Church where high means “dogmatic”.
Shortening is he omission of a word from a compound expression, the remaining words carrying
the total meaning that formerly belonged to the whole expression: e.g. private is a shortening of
private soldier (common soldier), periodical is a shortening of periodical paper/ review.
Nomination is a change of meaning in which a name is intentionally transferred from one
referent to another. Stern gives as example of nomination the convention of using proper names
for units of measurement , inventions, or discoveries(e.g. volt, sandwich). Other examples include
place names for products (e.g.champagne, a jersey), article of dress for person (e.g. mackintosh),
habitual expressions for persons (e.g.jingoes “music-hall patriots who sing jingo songs”
(Regular) transfer is the unintentional transfer of a word from one type of referent to another
one resembling it. Examples are root as in root of hair and bed as in river bed.
Permutation is the unintentional shift from a referent to another brought about by the possibility
of interpreting a word in two ways in some context. Beads in He is counting his beads can mean
either “prayers”(the original sense) or “little balls on a rosary”.
Adequation is the change of meaning resulting from the adaptation of the meaning of a word to
the actual characteristics of the referents.
Stern’s main example is horn, which, in order of historical development of meaning, denotes (i)
“animal horn”, (ii) “animal’s horn used for music”, (iii) “musical instrument made from animal’s
horn” and finally (iv) ”instrument for producing a certain kind of sound”. The change from (ii) to
(iii) is an instance of adequation.
Adequation differs from substitution in that the immediate shift does not lie in the referent ,as
in the change from (i) to (ii) or in the change from (iii) to (iv) but in the speaker’s apprehension
of the referent. As can be noticed, adequation occurs after other sense changes (e.g. substitution)
have taken place.
 Ullmann’s classification
Stephen Ullmann (1962) proposes a "better" version of Stern's classification of semantic changes.
Concerning the causes of semantic changes, Ullmann distinguishes two main approaches: A.
Meillet's theory and Sperber' s theory. In his article Comment les mots changent de sens (1904-
1905) Antoine Meillet maintains that there are three main causes of semantic change, viz.
linguistic, extralinguistic and social. Sperber's approach is different from other approaches in
that he emphasizes the role of emotion. By seeking in emotive forces the clue to changes in
meaning, Sperber (1923) focuses exactly on what the French philologist had disregarded.
Although Sperber neglected the non-expressive functions of language he introduced a new
perspective for the understanding of changes of meaning and their spread. Following Ullmann
(1963) we conclude that the two theories mentioned above are mutually complementary rather
than exclusive.
Ullmann (1963) distinguishes between semantic changes due to linguistic conservatism and
linguistic innovation. When we keep a word, in spite of the the fact that the character of its
referents has changed, we have - in Ullmann’s terminology - an instance of linguistic
conservatism. Warren (1992:9) rightly notices that Ullmann’s linguistic conservatism corresponds
to Stern’s substitution.
The semantic changes due to linguistic innovations are grouped into three main subclasses:
transfers of names, transfers of senses and composite changes. Considering the word a union of
name (form) and sense (content), Ullmann assumes that there are two possibilities: either the
name or the sense of the word may change or be transferred. Both transfers of names and
transfers of senses occur due to contiguity or similarity relations.
A case of name transfer through sense similarity is overlook which is related to the sense of
oversee. Instances of sense transfer through sense similarity are antropomorphic transfers like
leg of a table, eye of a needle, bridge head, etc. Sense transfers through contiguity are sail
meaning”ship”, town meaning “its inhabitants”. Such sense transfers based on similarity and
contiguity correspond to the ancient categories of metaphor and metonymy.
The third subgroup, composite changes, includes all asssociative links that can be conceived:
composite name transfers, composite sense transfers and sense-name transfers.
In general, more recent approaches to sense change list generalization (Hughes1989, Berndt
1989, Ungerer and Schmid 1996), specialization (Hughes 1989, Warren 1992, Ungerer and
Schmid 1996), figurative use (Berndt 1989, Warren1992) and substitution /semantic shift (Berndt
1989).
Specialization of meaning can be illustrated by the Old English word fugol which referred to
all kinds of birds. Gradually fugol was replaced by the word bird whose meaning underwent the
process of generalization(OE bryd ‘young bird’ ->Mod. E bird ‘any bird’)
Concerning figurative use we further consider the category BIRD and the attribute ‘locked in
a cage’ characterizing parrots, budgerigars, and the attribute ‘exotic appearance’ which applies to
ostriches, flamingoes, peacocks.
As can be noticed, the metaphorical uses of bird ‘prisoner’ and rare bird ‘strange person’ rely
predominantly on peripheral attibutes rather than on central attributes such as ‘can fly’ and ‘has
wings’ which are at the basis of bird ‘aeroplane, missile, spacecraft’.
The major attributes of good examples of the BIRD category (‘can fly’ and ‘has wings’) in
Anglo-Saxon times were probably similar to what they are today. However, there are instances
where central attributes of a category are replaced, normally as a result of extralinguistic changes.
This type of meaning change is traditionally called substitution or semantic shift or, in cognitive
linguistics terms, prototype shift.

Synchronic semantics or descriptive semantics

Besides diachronic or historical semantics, we also have to consider synchronic or

descriptive semantics which displays the applications of the principles of structural linguistics to
the study of meaning. This type of semantics is also called ‘paradigmatic’ (Bidu-Vrânceanu et al.
1997: 435) because it studies meaning through pragmatic sense relations such as synonymy,
antonymy, homonymy, polysemy and hyponymy. Synchronic semanticists also study meaning
through semantic components, distinctive semantic features or semes that are can be expressed
with the help of a binary feature notation using ‘+’ and ‘-‘. The major representatives of lexical
structural semantics are A. J. Greimas (1966), Bernard Pottier (1974) and Eugen Coşeriu (1981).
In Coşeriu ’s approach, lexical items are opposed to each other and this oppositional
contrast yields specific distinctive features or semantic components. Componential analysis (CA)
or the decomposition of lexemes into semantic elements or components goes as far back as 1943
to the Danish linguist Luis Hjemslev and has a long tradition both in European structuralism and
American anthropology.
Coşeriu (1981) stresses the importance of the distinction between signification
(“Bedeutung”) and designation (“Besiechnung”). Designation, for him denotes the relationship
between the full linguistic sign (combining significant and signifie) and the extralinguistic object
or referent. As signification (meaning or Bedeutung) alone is believed to be significant for
structural semantics Coşeriu ’s theory, excluding extralinguistic objects and relations and being
therefore restricted to language itself can be characterized as a “language-intrinsic” or “language-
immanent approach to semantics”. (Lipka, 1990: 99).

Interpretive or syntagmatic semantics

As in their concept of meaning they do not normally look beyond language, the schools of
interpretive and generative semantics must also be considered language-immanent approaches to
semantics. The main focus of interpretive semantics is syntagmatic semantic relations, i.e.
relations that hold between members of different grammatical categories which are
simultaneously present in a single syntactic structure. This is why interpretive semantics is also
called syntagmatic semantics. Representatives of interpretive/syntagmatic semantics such as
Jerrold J. Katz and Jerry A. Fodor (1963), Noam Chomsky (1965) and Ray Jackendof (1986) are
concerned with possible combinations of particular words and with restrictions on possible
combinations of meaning, the so-called “selection restrictions”, i.e. semantic restrictions on the
choice of individual lexical units in construction with other lexical units (e.g. pregnant will
typically ”select” a subject referring to someone or some animal that is female). Syntagmatic
semantics also deals with the meaning of complex linguistic expressions, including sentences.
This explains why some scholars refer to this type of semantics as ‘sentence semantics’.

Generative semantics

Generative semantics is that type of semantics that is concerned with lexical

decomposition, i.e. the analysis of word meanings into smaller units which are seen as standing to
one another in constructions like those of syntax. Generative semanticists such as James D.
McCawley (1968, 1973), and George Lakoff (1970, 1971) argue that lexemes have an internal
structure like the syntactic structure of sentences and phrases. For example, the sense of kill can
be analysed into CAUSE, BECOME , NOT and ALIVE; these elements are not simply conjoined
but are combined in a hierarchical structure which may be represented as (CAUSE (BECOME
(NOT ALIVE))).

Conceptual semantics

The decompositional theory of meaning has been developed by Ray Jackendoff (1972,
1983, 1986, 1990) who identifies a number of structural categories, including: Event, State,
Thing (or Object), Path, Place and Property. Loosely speaking, 'event' and 'state' tend to be
categories present in verbs; 'thing/object', in nouns; 'path' and 'place', in prepositional
(PREPOSITION) and ADVERBIAL constructions; and 'property', in ADJECTIVES. These categories can
all be sub-categorised by reference to specific semantic components. The event category, for
instance, can be broken down to include features like cause, motion, change and contact.
Similarly 'thing' can be sub-categorised in terms of the features [±bounded]. This will distinguish
between count nouns such as table and chair and mass nouns like music and water. Nouns which
are bounded are basically conceived of as units. If we dismantle a chair we can't call the
individual pieces a chair. Mass nouns, however, are thought of as substances. If we only hear a
few bars of a sonata we have still heard music. This is reflected in the grammar so that mass
nouns, for example, cannot go into the plural, e.g. *musics, whereas count nouns can, e.g. chairs.
Conceptual semantics is a complex and sophisticated attempt to identify universal semantic
categories and map them onto syntactic operations and structures].

Philosophical semantics

Philosophical semantics examines the relations between linguistic expressions and

phenomena in the world to which they refer, and considers the conditions under which such
expressions can be said to be true or false, and the factors which affect the interpretation of the
language as used (Crystal, 1991:310). Philosophical semantics is also called pure, formal or
logical semantics (because it is based on logical positivism). It studies the meaning of expressions
in terms of logical systems of analysis or calculi, and is thus more akin to formal logic or
mathematics than to linguistics. Formal semantics approaches meaning using the notion of truth
(inherited from logic) and attempts to formalize the meaning of sentences and the relations that
hold between them. These relations are synonymy, paraphrase, tautology, contradiction, anomaly,
entailment and presupposition. Entailment is the relation between sentences such that the truth of
the second sentence necessarily follows from the truth of the first sentence, but the falsity of the
second sentence does not necessarily follows from the falsity of the first sentence. For example,
Mary is running entails, among other things, that Mary is not standing still. Presupposition is the
relation between sentences such that the truth of the second sentence (the presupposed sentence)
is implied (presupposed) by the truth and by the falsity of the first sentence (the presupposing
sentence). For instance, the statement I’m sorry it’s raining presupposes that it is raining. The
presupposition also holds if the statement is negated: I’m not sorry it’s rainin, also presupposes
that it is raining.
The philosophers and logicians whose works had a strong impact on the study of
linguistic meaning are Charles Peirce (1931), Charles Morris (1938, 1946) and Rudolf Carnap
(1942). As the study of language can be included within the more general theory of signs called
semiotics or semiology, it is important to mention the three areas distinguished by the three
philosophers within the field of semiotics : semantics, syntax and pragmatics.
In his earlier work, Morris (1938: 6) defines semantics as the study of the ‘relations of
signs to the objects to which they are applicable’ and syntactics - or syntax as the study of ‘the
formal relations of signs to each other’.

Linguistic semantics

Linguistic semantics studies meaning in natural languages and is concerned primarily

with lexical meaning, grammatical meaning and sentence. It is generally recognized that one
cannot account for lexical meaning without accounting for sentence meaning and viceversa. Thus
the meaning of a sentence depends upon the meaning of its constituent lexemes and the meaning
of some, if not all lexemes depends upon the sentence in which they occur. Lyons (1995: 144)
discusses the importance of grammatical meaning as a further component of sentence meaning.
Unlike language- intrinsic or language – immanent approaches to semantics that exclude extra
linguistic objects (referents) and relations, referential or denotational (language-extrinsic)
approaches to semantics focus on the properties of the referents denoted by the linguistic signs.
In contrast to Coşeriu, for example, Leisi (1985), in his analysis of the content of words
makes explicit reference to specific characteristics of concrete extra linguistic referents.
Referential approaches to semantics must be related to the notions of prototype and gestalt in
psychology and linguistics.

Prototype semantics

According to prototype semantics, word meanings contain the properties of cognitive

categories, i.e. we can distinguish central and more peripheral meanings of a lexeme; word
meanings are not rigid, there are often gradual transitions between word meanings. Prototype
semantics is closer to psychological reality than traditional feature semantics (or all or nothing
semantics).The advantages of prototype semantics over feature semantics does not diminish the
usefulness of the later for the description and comparison of word meaning especially for
identifying semantic structures like lexical fields and sense relations. Prototype theory and the
family resemblance model cannot do without a feature-based classification. Ultimately, prototype
and feature semantics complement each other, in the sense that feature semantics receives a
sounder psychological basis.
Although prototype semantics is particularly adequate for the description of concrete
(extra linguistic) objects, especially those in which shape and size are relevant, it cannot capture
connotative feature or deal with deictics, relational words and syntagmatic relations (restrictions
or transfer of features). Nevertheless it has clear advantages in comparison with feature
(Aristotelian) semantics. Thus, the prototype approach can explain: (1) vague, fuzzy category
boundaries (2) gradual category membership (3) categories with prototypical kernels (4) the
different importance attributes.
What is ultimately needed in semantic theory is an integration of both language-intrinsic
and denotational /referential approaches. It is only in this way that the limits and boundaries of
either traditional structuralist semantics or prototype semantics can be transcended.
Cognitive semantics

Cognitive semantics has developed in the 1980’s on the basis of findings in cognitive
psychology. The main difference between structuralist semantics and cognitive semantics is that
the former analyzes meaning from a purely language-internal perspective (i.e. on the basis of
semantic networks connecting lexemes) whereas cognitive semantics explains meaning primarily
in terms of categorization (i.e. the grouping of similar phenomena into one class).
In cognitive semantics, meaning is considered to be inextricably linked to human
cognition, to the way we perceive the world and group phenomena into conceptual categories.
Language and cognition are considered to be inseparable: the structure of linguistic categories is
held to reflect the structure of conceptual categories (e.g. in the sense that the meaning of a word
is the cognitive category connected with it). On the cognitive view, word meaning is not
determined by the language system itself, but reflects how people interact with, perceive and
conceptualize the world. Although on the classical view word meaning was attributed a
conceptual status (Saussure, 1916: 156; Trier, 1931; Katz, 1972: 38), it is only the cognitive
paradigm in linguistics that the mental (i.e. conceptual) status of word meaning has been so
clearly brought to the fore.
Concerning the structure of word meaning, the classical approach advocates that lexical
concepts are well deliniated entities whose definitions are expressed in terms of an invariable set
of necessary and sufficient features applicable to all instances in that concept. While cognitive
semantics does not exclude that some lexical concepts may be analysed in terms of necessary and
sufficient features (e.g. “odd number”, “even number”, “plane geometry figure”), it maintains
that on the whole, they are not amenable to this type of analysis. On the cognitive view instances
of a concept may not be linked because they all share the same features, but because they share
different sets of features with each other. The features linking the various instances of a lexical
concept have been called ‘the family resemblance relationship’.
Cognitive semantics suggests that all conceptual information associated with a lexical
item is broadly encyclopedic, that is, it is part of and needs to be understood against broader
cognitive structures. These cognitive structures have been labeled by using a diverse range of
terms: schema (Barlet, 1932), script (Schank and Abelson, 1977), prototype (Rosch, 1978),
experiential gestalt (Lakoff and Jonhson, 1980), global pattern (de Beaugrande and Dressler,
1981), frame (Fillmore, 1982), idealized cognitive model (Lakoff, 1983), mental model (Jonhson-
Laird, 1983), cognitive domain (Langacker,1987).
Cognitive semantics is the semantic approach of linguists who see no separation between
linguistic knowledge and general thinking, or cognition. Cognitive linguists tend to adopt a
functional view of language, as opposed to the more formal accounts favoured by Chomsky and
similar generative linguists. They argue that no adequate account of grammatical rules is possible
without considering the meaning of elements. As such, the difference between language and other
mental processes is viewed as one of degree rather than kind.