THE CONCEPTS OF THE THEORY OF SEMANTICS

TOPIC

Do you find meaning when you look at a tree?A tree does not mean, it just exists How does human language produce Meaning?

How to account for the fact that elements of natural environment do not convey meaning?

MEANINGLESSNESS OF NATURAL ENTITIES AND THE PROPERTY OF LANGUAGE TO MAKE SENSE/MEANING

1) Sense

Words Phrases Sentences

2) Reference

Language Outside world

relationship

relationship

relationship

Relationship inside

language

Relationship with

outside world

sense

reference

LANGUAGE

a treeI think therefore I

am

Word Meaning

Referential

Inside language

Outside world

A Sentence is an ideal string of words in accordance with

grammatical rules of a language

An utterance is any stretch of spoken language

SENTENCE UTTERANCE

Artificial

sentence is read

Cannot slow or fast

Begin with capital Letter

Natural

It is uttered

Slow or fast

Preceeded and followed by silence

The Director is absent

sentence

sentence

sentence

The Director is not around

The Director has gone

The Director is not present

A contradictory sentence is a sentence which propositional content is necessarily false

eg Cats are human beings

A paraphrase is a sentence which expresses the same proposition as another sentence

eg John sold that car to Mary / Mary bought that car from John

Language as an activity is the main canal in meaning conception (say mean)

The above mentioned concepts are responsible for the manufacturing of meaning

Hence they are the concepts underlying semantics which is the science of meaning

Processing

RAW MATERIALS OF MEANING

Sentence-Utterance-Proposition

MEANING PROCESSORSAnalytic/synthetic sentence

Contradictory sentenceParaphrase

MEANING IS CONCEIVED

Sense Connotation

INSIDE LANGUAGE

MEANINGFULNESS

Reference Denotation

OUTSIDE WORLDMEANINGLESSNESS