1) Identify some languages that are not natural human languages.
2) Think of any supporting evidence for the assumption that meaning in
natural languages is very responsive to, and often a reflex of, human perception and conception!
3) A whistle is used in different semiotic systems by a football referee, a
policeman directing traffic, the doorman at a five-star hotel, and once upon a time by a workman on a building site when a young woman walks by. Comment on what all these systems have in common and yet how in each one the whistle has a distinct purpose. What is/are the language counterparts to the whistle?
4) Discuss why it is that human languages are regularly referred to as
‘natural languages’ yet Grice referred to their meanings as ‘meaning’?
5) What difference can you detect between language as an abstract
entity on the one hand, and language as either a physical or psychological object?
SEMANTICS (PBI 5032) I Hj. Renny Kurnia Sari, M.Pd. 2