The scope of Semantics

Made Simple

• In this chapter Palmer tries to clear the way for the considerations of the various aspects of semantics (which will be discussed in the coming chapters).• He will clear the way by:

(1) discussing and dismissing two views of semantics which are unsatisfactory.

Although these two views seem reasonable at first sight, they provide

no solution to semantic problems.(2) trying to define some of the more

important distinctions that have to be made.

•The first view is “naming” and the

second view is “concept”.

Naming • It has been mentioned before that

language can be taken as a communication system that works according to the notion of the signifier and the signified.

• However, the basic problem here is the establishment of the nature of the signifier and the signified and the relationship between them.

• According to Plato:(1) The signifier is a word in the

language.(2) The signified is an object in the

world which the word refers to.There are many difficulties

concerning this view:

(1) It seems to apply only to nouns. It is difficult (if not impossible) to include the other parts of speech in the ‘naming theory’.

(2) ‘Colour words’ (which are adjectives) can be regarded as names, but this not possible with other adjectives such as early , attractive, true, traditional. It is difficult to use them as ‘labels’ to identify things which they denote.

• This is even clearer with verbs. It is almost impossible to identify what is ‘named’ by a verb. There are two difficulties here:

(1) It is not possible to separate the doer (noun) from what is being done (verb) by him or her.

(2)Even if we can distinguish the doer (n) from what s/he is doing (v), we can easily identify the characteristics of the doer (n) but it is very difficult to identify the essential characteristics of the verb.

This is the case with the verbs which can be ‘seen’ (run). What about

verbs which cannot be ‘seen’ (remember, like).

(4) The same is true for prepositions, conjunction, pronouns, etc.

• If this is so, is it possible to keep the ‘theory of meaning’ but apply it to nouns only? There is a problem here:• There are a number of problems

here:

Problem number one:

• Some nouns do not denote objects in the real world because they relate to creatures that do not exist (unicorn, fairy, gremlin).

• This problem can be solved by distinguishing two kinds of world:

(1) The real world.(2) The world of fairies.• But this creates another problem:

Problem number two:• We have to admit that words are not just

names of things.• A very good explanation has to be found

as how to move from giving names to objects in the world to giving names to objects that do not exist.

• Such words, then, become evidence of the fact that words are not simply names of the objects of our experience.

Problem number three:• There are nouns that refer neither to

imaginary items (fairies and unicorns) nor to physical objects (horses, robots). Examples of such nouns are: love, hate, faith.

• These are ‘nouns’ because they refer to abstract things; and they are ‘things’ because they have nouns corresponding to them. We get into a circular definition here: things are what are named by nouns.

Problem number four:

• There are physical objects that are identifiable but the meaning is not the same as its denotation such as the evening star and the morning star. These do not have the same meaning but they denote a single object Venus).

Problem number five

• Words that are linked with visible objects in the world around us often seem to denote a whole set of rather different objects. The dividing line between the items referred to by one word and those referred to by another is often vague and there may be overlap.

• What is the difference between a field and a farm? A street and an avenue? A shopping mall and a shopping arcade?

Problem number six• In the world of experience, objects are not clearly

grouped together ready to be labelled with a single word.

• There are two explanations for this but both of which are unhelpful

(a) The 'realist' view:• All things called by the same name have some

common property(b) The 'nominalist' view:• All things called by the same name have nothing

in common but the name.

• The second view is obviously false because we do not

use chair or hill for objects that are completely different -the objects

named in this way have something in common.

The first view is also not valid:(1) There are no clearly defined 'natural'

classes of objects in the world around us. (2) There are no 'universal' classes (classes

common to all languages) because the classification of objects differs from language to language.

(3) The words of a language do not often reflect the reality of the world, but the interests of the people who speak it.

(4) According to scientific terminology, there are natural classes:• Each creature has a particular name,

and no creature can be labelled in two different ways, nor is there any overlap between the classes. • But these scientific classifications are

not typical of everyday experience.

• We can be influenced by scientific knowledge, but we cannot go too far so as to call salt ‘sodium chloride” or ‘NaCl’. Salt, for ordinary language, is the substance that appears on our tables. It is salt even if its chemical composition is not precisely that of the chemists' definition

• Ordinary language differs from scientific language precisely in the fact that its terms are not clearly defined and its classes

not rigorously established.

Problem number seven

• The ‘naming theory’ for sentences is no more satisfactory than the ‘naming theory’ for words. We cannot directly relate the meaning of a sentence to things and events in the world. • There are two views here:

• The strongest view which relates sentences to actual things and events is obviously unsound, since we can tell lies or make mistakes (there may be no horse on the lawn).

• A weaker view which sees meaning in terms of the conditions under which a sentence would be true. But this gets us nowhere.

• The truth conditions can be most easily stated in the same words as the sentence:

There is a horse on the lawnis true if

There is a horse on the lawn; or

( There is a horse on the lawn means 'There is a horse on the lawn').

The tautology is obvious-we are saying nothing at all.