ABOUT SEMANTICS

Definition:

SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.

Semantics adalah studi tentang MAKNA DALAM BAHASA. Makna itu samar-samar, tidak
substansial dan sulit dipahami. Untuk memahami makna, kita harus cermat terhadap bahasa
yang kita ucapkan dan cara penggunaannya. Mulailah membiasakan diri untuk berpikir hati-
hati terhadap bahasa dan cara menggunakannya.

Comment:

It may seem that meaning is so vague, insubstantial, and elusive that it is impossible to come to any
clear, concrete, or tangible conclusions about it. By careful thought about the language you speak
and the way it is used, definite conclusions CAN be arrived at concerning meaning. In the first
exercise below, start to get yourself into the habit of careful thinking about your language and the
way you use it, concentrating, naturally, on instances of such words as mean, means, and meaning.

Practice 1:

Reproduced below is a well-known passage from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. Pick out
all the instances of the word mean (or means, or meant). After the passage there are some
questions for you to answer.

“. . . that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday
presents.”

“Certainly,” said Alice.

“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice
knockdown argument for you.”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown argument’,” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it
to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

(1) What word is the subject of the verb mean in “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’”?

(2) What is the subject of the verb mean in “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown
argument’”?
(3) What is understood as the subject of the verb mean in “it means just what I choose it to mean –
neither more nor less.”?

(4) List all the instances where mean, means, or meant has a personal subject, e.g. I or you. (Include
instances already listed in the questions above.)

(5) List all the instances in which mean, or means, or meant is understood as having as subject
something linguistic, e.g. a word, or words. (Include instances mentioned in questions above.)

Comment:

Lewis Carroll had brilliant insights into the nature of meaning (and into the foibles of people who
theorize about it). In the passage above, he is playfully suggesting that the meanings carried by
words may be affected by a speaker’s will. On the whole, we probably feel that Alice is right, that
words mean what they mean independently of the will of their users, but on the other hand it would
be foolish to dismiss entirely Humpty Dumpty’s enigmatic final remark.

Lewis Carroll’s aim was to amuse, and he could afford to be enigmatic and even nonsensical. The aim
of serious semanticists is to explain and clarify the nature of meaning. For better or for worse, this
puts us in a different literary genre from Through the Looking Glass. The time has come to talk
seriously of meaning.

The word mean, then, can be applied to people who use language, i.e. to speakers (and authors), in
roughly the sense of ‘intend’. And it can be applied to words and sentences in a different sense,
roughly expressed as ‘be equivalent to’. The first step in working out a theory of what meaning is, is
to recognize this distinction clearly and always to keep in mind whether we are talking about what
speakers mean or what words (or sentences) mean. The following two definitions encapsulate this
essential distinction.

Definition:

SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when they uses a piece of
language.

SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts
as the equivalent of in the language concerned.

Comment:

The distinction is useful in analysing the various kinds of communication between people made
possible by language.

Practice 2:

Look at the following utterances and explain the sentence meaning in Indonesian and the speaker
meaning in English.

(1) Tired traveller: “This suitcase is killing me”

(2) Assistant in a shop: “We regularly do the impossible; miracles take a little longer”

(3) During a business meeting: “It’s a dog-eat-dog situation”

(4) During a heated argument: “Don’t bite my head off!”

(5) Hungry person at the dinner table: “I could eat a horse!”

Comment: Examples such as these show that speakers can convey meaning quite vividly by using
sentences whose meanings are in some sense problematical. To account for this, it is necessary to
analyse at two levels: firstly, to show what is ‘wrong’ with such sentences, i.e. why they can’t be
literally true, and secondly, how speakers nevertheless manage to communicate something by
means of them.

Practice 3:

Mark each of the following statements true (T) or false (F) and why false?

(1) Alive means the opposite of dead.

(2) Buy has an opposite meaning from sell.

(3) Caesar is and is not a meaningful English sentence.

(4) Caesar is a prime number is nonsensical.

(5) Caesar is a man is nonsensical.

Comment:

Each of the true statements here (and the negation of the false ones) is a statement of some
particular basic fact falling within the scope of semantics. Obviously, one could not expect chemical
theory, for example, to illuminate any of these facts. Chemical theory deals with chemical facts, such
as the fact that iron rusts in water. Semantic theory deals with semantic facts, facts about meaning,
such as those stated in the true statements above. In aiming to discover some system and pattern in
an assortment of particular facts about the meanings of individual words, sentences, and utterances,
it is obviously necessary to try to move from particular facts, such as those mentioned above, to
generalizations, i.e. statements about whole classes of items.

Practice 1:
Answer practice 1 no 1. Apa subject dari 'mean' di kalimat “I don’t know what you mean by
‘glory’”?
"... you mean ..." The subject is 'you'
Answer practice 1 no 2. Apa subject dari 'mean' di kalimat “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice
knockdown argument’”?
'Glory’ doesn’t mean ... The subject is 'glory'
Subject "it". It untuk menggantikan "word"
Answer practice 1 no 4. Sebutkan subject-subject dari 'mean', 'means', 'meant' yang
bentuknya personal subject.
I, You, 'It' is not personal subject. Personal subject itu berbentuk orang
Answer practice 1 no 5. Sebutkan subject-subject dari 'mean', 'means', 'meant' yang
bentuknya bukan personal subject.
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown argument’,” Alice objected. The subject of 'mean'
is 'glory'
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I
choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” The subjects of 'mean' are 'it' and 'it'
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many di fferent things.”
The subject of 'mean' is 'words'
Conclusion: Subject berbentuk noun (kata benda) dan terletak di depan verb (kata kerja)

Paractice 2
1. ✓The sentence meaning is Koper ini membunuhku

✓The speaker meaning is she feels extremly tired because she has to carry very
heavy suitcases throughout the trip

2. ✓ The sentence meaning is Kami biasanya melakukan hal yang mustahil; keajaiban
membutuhkan waktu sedikit lebih lama

✓ The speaker meaning is to get the impossible things we need a little more time and
effort.

3. ✓ The sentence meaning is ini situasi anjing makan anjing

✓ The speaker meaning is situation in which people compete with each other for
success in a cruel and selfish way

4. ✓ The sentence meaning is jangan gigit kepalaku

✓ The speaker meaning is not to yell at me or to be very critical of me especially

very suddenly and without a good reason

5. ✓ The sentence meaning is saya bisa makan seekor kuda

✓ The speaker meaning is She is extremely hungry

Practice 3
1) True
2) True

3) True

4) True

5) False ( because in actually Caesar is a clever and logical man in an empire )