approaches to meaning-octavio
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7/31/2019 Approaches to Meaning-Octavio
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Meaning is at once the most obvious and most
mysterious feature of human language. More than
3,000 years of speculation by philosophers andlinguists have failed to crack the central conundrum
of meaning. We will begin by surveying some
theories of meaning.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
If we ask someone the meaning of the word cat ,
we are very likely to be told that the word refers
to in the world.
This view that the meaning of an expression is
what it refers to, or names, is often called
referential theory or naming theory.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
The word
names the in the real world
The object tree is called the
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Name objects and events
Name properties of thoseobjects and events
Name actions
Name properties of actions
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Of course, there some problems with this view.
It is not always immediately obvious what is
being named.
What do conjunctions but and and refer to?
What do prepossitions like for and to stand for?
What do we say abour imaginary objects or actions?
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This theory suggests that any particular sound
image is pshychologically associated with a
particular concept.
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When the word is spoken,
the concept of is called upon the mind of
the hearer.
Everyone of us who knows the word or expressions
has a concept or idea in his mind associated with it.
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proposed by Ogden & Richards in their “The
Meaning of Meaning” . They saw the
relationship between words and things as a
triangle.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
( thought)
refers to
(the word)
evokes
stands for
There is not a direct link
between the sound of
the word dog and the
object it refers to. There
is no direct or natural
link between symbol
and referent, that is,
between language and
the world. The link is via
thought , the concept in
our minds.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
The SYMBOL refers to the linguistic elements
(word, sentence, etc.), the REFERENT refers tothe object in the world of experience, and
THOUGHT or REFERENCE refers to concept.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
e.g. The dog over there looks friendly.
The word “dog” is directly associated with a
certain concept in our mind, i.e. what a “dog”
is like, but it is not directly linked to the
referent (the particular dog) in this particular
case.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
This theory avoids many of the problems of
naming. However, to state the meaning is a
concept does not overcome all the problemsthat naming theory has .
We can still ask what are the concepts that
and or but stand for?
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
"Suppose Jack and Jill are walking down a lane.
Jill is hungry. She sees an apple in a tree.
She makes a noise with her larynx, tongue,and lips. Jack vaults the fence, climbs the tree,
takes the apple, brings it to Jill, and places it in
her hand. Jill eats the apple…”
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Practical event preceding
the act of speech
(hunger)
“… we … will naturally distinguish between theact of speech and the other occurrences,
which we shall call practical events."
Practical events following
the act of speech
(reaction)
SPEECH
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
"Language enables one person to make a
reaction (R ) when another person has the
stimulus (S). “
speechless reaction:: S > ——————————————> R
reaction mediated by speech: S > ——> r s > ——> R
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
If Jill had been alone, she would have first
received a STIMULUS (S) (hunger) which have
produced a speechless reaction, RESPONSE (R )
that would have made a move to get the apple.
S > ——————————————> R
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
However, since Jack was with her, the stimulusproduced not the response R , but a linguistic
response, that of saying to Jack, (r). The sound
waves reculting from this in turn created a stimulus
for Jack, a linguistic stimulus (s), which results in
his non-linguistic response R of getting the apple.
S > ——> r ……………….. s > ——> R
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
However, there are some significant practical
difficulties with this viewpoint.
For example, since the practical stimulus S is not
always obvious, so how do we identify it?
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Many times context determines meaning of words
and sentences.
The view that meaning is found in the context
within which a particular expression is uttered
suggests that we can derive meaning from, or
reduce it to, the observable context.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Every utterance occurs in a particular spatio-
temporal situation. Each utterance is limited by
various factors of the situational context. These
factors include:
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
(i) The setting (formal, informal…)
(ii) The speaker and hearer (relationship,
position…)
(iii) The activities they are engaged in at the time
(iv) The presence or absence of other participants
(relationship, position…)(v) The presence of various external objects and
events
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
The linguistic context alone is the weaker form of
contextual views. It is principally concerned with
the probability of words or expressions co-
ocurring or collocating with each other. This is
obviously an aspect of meaning.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Truth-conditional is a theory that sees the
meaning of assertions as being the same as, or
reducible to, their truth conditions.
It attempts to define the meaning sense of a
given proposition in terms of the truth conditions
under which it obtains in the real world.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
The meaning of conditional statements can be
described by making reference to the truthconditions of the statement in an a priori
unbounded number of "possible worlds."
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
We know the meaning of both sentences equally well,
and knowing their meaning means knowing their
sense of truth conditions. The sense of a declarativesentence permits you to know under what
“circumstances” that sentence is true.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Those “circumstances” are called truth conditions of the sentence.
The truth conditions of a declarative sentence arethe same as the sense of the sentence.
We compare their truth conditions with “the realworld” or some historical fact, and can thus say
which one is true and which one is false.
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
Statements about meaning are based on the
formulation that:
S (sentence). P (set of conditions that guarantees
the truth of S)
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
For this statement to be true:
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Luis Octavio Canseco García / Escuela de Idiomas / Universidad Regional del Sureste (URSE) / Oaxaca
If this theory is adopted, we limit semantics to
being concerned principally about meaning in
relation to truth and falsehood. Some linguists
have objected that this is too narrow of a view.
• How can we discussed the meaning of interrogatives or
imperatives?
• How can we discussed the truth or falsehood of a question
or a command?
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