Group IV Topics:

The Meaning of Language

a. Meaning and No Meaning

b. Meaning More or Less c. Same and Different Meaning d. Ways of Meaning

e. Social Meaning
f. Grammatical Meaning g. The Trouble with Translation

What Speakers know about : 1. Sentences meaning 2. Compositional semantics 3. Lexical Semantics 4. Pragmatics

Meaning and No Meaning

Language is, above all, meaning. Meanings are attached to pieces of words, to words, or to groups of words. Meanings are attached to the spoken signals of language. Meanings are attached to the shifts and changes of grammar. The sounds of words have no meaning to begin with. People attach a meaning to them. Example: The word zonko.

Meaning More or Less

Some words have more of what might be called outside meaning than others. Orange, for instance, means a reddish-yellow color, a fruit, etc. But it also means tigers and sunsets and excitementmeanings outside the dictionary definitions. Words like the, and, to have little outside meaning. They are sometimes called function words (see grammar). Much-repeated words may mean less after a while. Clichs are an example. A clich is an expression that loses its punch through overuse. Used sparingly, That's really great! may get a listener's special attention. If it's used too often, however, it does not mean much to most listeners. Common expressions of courtesy often lose meaning. Chances are that a casual acquaintance who asks How are you? doesn't really want to know.

Same and Different Meaning

Few words have exactly the same meaning.

Example: Return and take back are much alike in English. But like all synonyms they do not always mean the same. There's a world of difference between We took Ralphie back to the monkey house and We returned Ralphie to the monkey house. But in practice, speakers accept certain words as more or less the same. This helps them communicate more easily.

The same word often has different meanings, depending on how it's used with other words. In English, go can mean leave, as in the phrase Please don't go; work, as in My watch won't go; and reach, as in It doesn't go far enough.

Homonyms, or homophones, like bear and bare are more or less the same word to a listener. It's how they're used with other words that gives them different meanings. Not only do the same words have different meanings; the same groups of words often do. She drove into the bank this morning is an example. Was it a drive-in bank? Or did she zig when she should have zagged? Or what? The surrounding sentences will give clues to the meaning. A phrase or clause doesn't always mean the same as its words. Idioms are an example. Another example is the way the words are spoken. Oh, sure I will! in a sarcastic tone means something very different from what the words say.

Ways of Meaning

A word commonly has different ways of meaning. What a word refers to is only one way it means. Thus, the word prunes refers to a food. But much of the meaning of words has to do with the speaker's attitude. So the meaning of prunes depends also on how the speaker feels about them. The word has a pleasant meaning if he likes them, an unpleasant meaning if he doesn't. The meaning a word refers to is its denotation. What a word suggests because of the speaker's or listener's attitude is its connotation. Languages have different ways of separating meaning. The Inuit language has separate words for falling snow and snow on the ground, while English uses only one word for bothsnow. Shona, a language of Zimbabwe, has three words for all the colors. One word means red, purple, orange. Another means white, yellow, green.

Social Meaning

People don't usually talk to themselves. They talk to other people. And their talk has social meaning. Only part of the social meaning of a conversation is carried by words. Take saying hello or talking about the weather. Often such talk has little dictionary meaning. It is a way of being friendly or polite. Choice of language often has social meaning. An informal Yeah in the neighborhood carries a relaxed meaning. Often it is replaced by a formal Yes in a classroom or at a job interview. Spanish-speaking Americans often switch from Spanish at home to English in the classroom. The same principle applies to other bilingual students. Use of special work words may mean a speaker is an architect or plumber or foundry worker. In many countries, the words a speaker uses label him a member of the upper or lower classes. Swear words have social meaning. So do expressions using God's name in vain. The same goes for conversation about such things as using the toilet. Usually these are no-no's, and they have that meaning attached to them.

Grammatical Meaning

Some meanings attach to words. These are dictionary meanings. And some meanings, called grammatical meanings, attach to the signals of grammar. The form a word takes may have grammatical meaning. In English, -s or es added to a noun means plural or more than one. A mashita ending on a Japanese verb means past tense. Word order may have grammatical meaning. Take the English sentence Mary bit John. In English, the common order for statements is subject-verb-direct object. So Mary means subject, and John means direct object. It's Mary who does the biting, John who gets bitten. Function words have grammatical meaning. In English, the or a means that a noun is coming up. Quin (who) at the beginning of a Spanish sentence means that the sentence is a question.

Spoken signals can have dictionary meaning. Pitch in the words of tone languages is an example. But spoken signals can also have grammatical meaning. In English, for example, stress on sus- in suspect signals that the word is a noun. Stress on -spect, on the other hand, means verb. At the end of a clause, a drop in pitch with a fading into silence commonly means statement.

The Trouble with Translation

The words of one language seldom mean the same as the words of another. Take the Russian Ja govorila. It can be translated into English as I said. But the meanings are not exactly the same. The verb govorila tells a Russian speaker that I is a female, and that I spoke more than once or hadn't finished speaking. Neither of these meanings is carried by the English words. In some cases, the same word may not have the same meaning in two different languages. English borrowed the word sputnik from Russian. It means artificial satellite. But in Russian, the word also means fellow-traveler and guide. So sputnik in English does not mean the same as sputnik in Russian.

The Trouble with Translation

A translation, at best, conveys something similar to the original language. It tries to transfer meanings from one language to another. But different words and different mechanics of language must be used. Take the Japanese Musukosan wa hebi wo tabemashita. Word by word this reads, Your son + wa + snake + wo + ate. But that's not a translation. Wa and wo have no dictionary meaning, only grammatical meaningwa comes after a subject, wo after a direct object. So wa and wo are dropped in translation. This leaves us with the translated phrase, Your son snake ate. But in English the direct object (snake) should follow the verb (ate). So the words must be switched around to read Your son ate snake. That's still not comfortable English, though. Japanese has no word for a, so it must be added. The result is Your son ate a snake. But even that doesn't carry over all the meanings of the original Japanese phrase. Musukosan, for instance, has a meaning of respect that is missing in the English your son. Just the same, it's a good translation. And it is important to note that a Japanese speaker trying to translate Your son ate a snake from English into Japanese faces the same problems in reverse.

The Trouble with Translation

A translation doesn't usually take the same form as the original. Sometimes a noun can be translated by a noun, and a phrase can be translated by a phrase. But it doesn't work that way very often. The German phrase Guten Tag means Good day, but it's better translated as Hellopeople don't usually say Good day in English. The French phrases'il vous plat (if it pleases you) is better translated in English as please. As we can see, the idea of only one correct translation leads to problems. For instance, the Italian La casa a Sua disposizione can be translated as The house is at your disposal or perhaps as Make yourself at home. It is both a matter of choice and a matter of style. Much depends on the circumstancesfor example, whether the words were used in a formal or informal way.

The Trouble with Translation

When computers are used to translate material, the result is called machine translation. A computer can work much faster than a human in looking up a word. But the machines have many problems. They have trouble identifying the same sounds made by different people. Sometimes different sounds are spelled with the same letters. For example, compare the sounds of the s in cats and in dogs. Computers have trouble distinguishing those sounds. And computers have much trouble with meaningwords with different possible meanings, sentences with different possible meanings. A computer is only as good as the information put into it. And that's the heart of the machine translation problem. No one has all the answers to how any language works.

SENTENCE MEANING

It was absolutely full . Processes involved: 1. Linguistic decoding: X was absolutely full of Y 2. Interpreting the explicatures (X and Y) of the sentence. This is done by inferencing processes which I will not explicit; you may do it yourself. X must refer to Paris Y must refer to people / tourists Final sentence meaning: Paris was full of people.

SPEAKER'S MEANING:

One arrives at it by inferencing processes only. This meaning may not be directly depending of the sentence meaning. In this case, it depends on your knowledge of the speaker. If you know that he hates people and loves tranquility you will interpret his utterance as: No, it was horrible! But if you know that he loves crowded cities with lots of lively atmosphere, music, dancing, drinking and whatnot, then you may interpret his meaning as: Yes, indeed! It was smashing!! As you see, the speaker's meaning has very little in common with what he says explicitely. Therefore, we call this process of inferencing: recovering the implicatures of an expression. You see, IT'S NOT DIFFICULT AT ALL

Speakers meaning

The standard structure when using language is on the side of the speaker meaning and sentence, and on the side of the receiver meaning and action. If we accept this we also accept idealism as our philosophical home and we enter an ethical debate about the deeper meaning of language. The structure of language is that we start with a speaker or writer. This person wants to say something. This something is called speaker meaning. Maybe he or she wants to say "It is raining". The speaker uses words in specific combinations called grammatical. In this example, the words might be "It is raining". This is a sentence, so this is called sentence meaning. The receiver is listening or reading. When confronted with the words "It is raining", the receiver might get an understanding of the content. "You mean it is raining" he or she might say in order to confirm the understanding.

The receiving of the words might also cause action. Maybe the receiver brings an umbrella, a raincoat and boots when going outside. We use language a lot. All aspects are important. Speaker meaning is important as that is the starting point. Sentence meaning is important as that is the specific words used for expressing meaning and achieving understanding and action. The understanding of the receiver is important or the whole thing gets more or less meaningless. All is important, but speaker meaning is probably extra important. Speaker meaning is the cause for using language at all. So what is speaker meaning? This meaning existing in the speaker on a pre-language level, what is it technically? It certainly is not the rain that falls. The rain does not give rise to the impulse to say "It is raining". The rain is an external, physical phenomenon while the impulse to speak is in mind. It might have an electrical or chemical base but the important is not this base but the content.

The material base in mind for "It is raining" and for "It is not raining" is not very different, but the content is very different. So speaker meaning might have some material base but the important aspect is not the matter but the content. An old philosophical debate is between materialists (like Karl Marx) and idealists (like Hegel). If we accept the analysis of speaker meaning shown above, we find ourselves in the idealist camp. Speaker meaning is the base for language and it it is not material. Another issue is what we should use language for. Sometimes it is important to say "It is raining". But if language is based in the mind and not in some material reality we have to find some idealistic principles for using language. The idealist principles are also called the ethical principles.