Semantics

What is Semantics? And what is the importance of the meaning in semantics.

          During the period between 1957 and 1965 Katz and Fodor proposed a semantic theory which appeared in ‘Language’ (1963); a prelude to Chomskyn systems as the rule of the semantic component (Cf. Judith Greene 1977;63). Katz and Fodor’ theory was modeled to perform two functions; first to provide a systematic basin for picking out synonymous, ambiguous and anomalous sentences; secondly to assign semantic interpretations to permissible  sentences.

What is Semantics

          Semantics is a science which studies meaning and development or words in language. The word ‘semantics’ comes from the Greek word ‘sema’ which means ‘sign’ or ‘signal’. The verb ‘semains’ means ‘mean or signify’. The ‘Oxford Dictionary’ also defines the word

‘semantics’ as ‘signification’ or ‘meaning’.

          It deals with the history and changes in the meaning of objects (names, things) and concepts (ideas). Semantics has two approaches; synchronic and diachronic. Synchronic semantics deals with the meaning and development of words in a  given period of time. It  pays no attention to past history or future destiny. While diachronic semantics deals with inter-relations of different periods in the matter of changes and development in the meaning of words. A semanticist analyzes and discovers ambiguities in the meaning of words. He explains antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, polysemy, anomaly, contradiction, implication, transformation   and ambiguity of the language. He also explains their nature, function, and relation. That way, he does not study meaning of different words only but he also studies their inter-relations.

          According to Manfred Dier Wish

Semantic theory must a make reference to the syntactic structure in a precise way.

systematically represent the meaning of a single word

How the structure of the meaning of words and the syntactic relations interact in order to constitute. The interpretation of sentence.

It must indicate how these interpretation are related to the things spoken about.

Thus according to Manfred Bierwish, semantics deals with meaning of individual words their status in a sentence, their inter-relations and their context to the thing spoken about. The study of meaning of words is the heart of semantics.

Importance of the Meaning

          Structuralists try to study language without meaning. The importance of meaning that has been recognized since times immemorial. Each and every word hears its own shades of meaning. The Vedas also consider meaning as the essence of language. Speech without meaning is call the tree without fruits of flower’ Ancient Indian linguistics such as Patanjali and Vyas remarks that there is an eternal relationship between word and meaning. Patanjali points out those words naturally express meaning. There is a large variety of words in different languages of the world. There will be nothing like semantics if a word means the same thing in all languages. Some western scholars today have started talking about semantic universals and there is a wide agreement that  meaning is the soul of word.

Difficulties in the Study of Meaning

          The problem of ‘meaning’ is quite difficult, it is because of its toughness that some linguists went on to the extent of excluding semantics from linguistics. A well-known structuralist made the astonishing statement that ‘linguistic system of a language does not include the semantics. The system is abstract, it is a signaling system, and as soon as we study semantics we are no longer studying language but the semantic system associated with language. The structuralist were of the opinion that it is only the form of language which can be studied, and not the abstract functions. Both these are misconceptions. Recently a serious interest has been taken in the various problems of semantics. And semantics is being studied not only by the linguists but also by philosophers, psychologists, scientists, anthropologists and sociologists.

          Scholars have long puzzled over what words mean or what they represent, or how they are related to reality. They have at times wondered whether words are more real than objects, and they have striven to find the essential meanings of words. It may be interesting to ask whether words do have essential meaning. For example, difficulties may arise in finding out the essential meaning of the word table in water table, dining table, table amendment, and the table of 9. An abstract word like good creates even more problems. Nobody can exactly tell what good really means, and how a speaker of English ever learns to use the word correctly. So the main difficulty is to account facts about essential meanings, multiple meanings, and word conditions. The connotating use of words adds further complications to any theorizations about meaning, particularly their uses in metaphor and poetic language. Above all is the question : where does meaning exist: in the speaker or the listener or in both, or in the context or situation ?

          Words are in general convenient units to state meaning. But words have meanings by virtue of their employment in sentences, most of which contain more than one word. The meaning of a sentence, though largely dependent on the meaning of its component words taken individually, is also affected by prosodic features. The question whether word may be semantically described or in isolation, is more a matter of degree than of a simple answer yes or no. It is impossible to describe meaning adequately any other way except by saying how words are typically used as part of longer sentences and how these sentences are used. The meanings of sentences and their components are better dealt with in linguistics in turns of how they function than exclusively in terms of what they refer to.

          Words are tools; they become important by the function they perform, the job they do, the way they are used in certain sentences. In addition to reference and function, scholars have also attached import talkie to popular historical considerations, especially etymology, while studying word-meanings. Undobtedly the meaning of any word is casually the product of continuous changes in its antecedent meanings or uses, and in many cases it is the collective product of generations of cultural history. Dictionaries often deal with this sort of information if it is available, but in so ding they are passing beyond the bounds of synchronic statement to the separate linguistic realm of historical explanation.

          Different answers have been given to the questions related to meaning. Psychologists have tried  to assess the availability of certain kinds of responses to objects, to experiences, and to words themselves. Philosophers have proposed a variety of systems and theories to account for the data that interest them. Communication scientists have developed information theory so that they can use mathematical models to explain exactly what is predictable and what is not predictable when messages are channeled through various kinds of communication networks. From approaches like these a complex array of conceptions of meaning emerges