LOURDES COLLEGE
Inc.
Cagayan de Oro City
Name of Student : CALO, REY D.
Course & Year : MAED- ENG
Task Number : 1
Week Number : 1
Topic : The Study of Meaning & Its Principle
Topic Focus Tasks My Answer
Semantics Explained What is Linguistics Semantics? Semantics, or the study of relationships between words and
how we construct meaning, sheds light on how we experience
the world and how we understand others and ourselves.
Semantics means the meaning and interpretation of words,
signs, and sentence structure. Semantics largely determine our
reading comprehension, how we understand others, and even
what decisions we make as a result of our interpretations.
Semantics can also refer to the branch of study within
linguistics that deals with language and how we understand
meaning. This has been a particularly interesting field for
philosophers as they debate the essence of meaning, how we
build meaning, how we share meaning with others, and how
meaning changes over time.
Linguistics and Psychology How is Psychology related to The main area of overlap between linguistics and psychology is
the study of language? in the domain known as psycholinguistics. The field expanded
in the 1960s as a response to the intellectual excitement
generated by the work of Chomsky.
Psychology deals with how humans relate to one another (and
to themselves, which sounds strange but is true) in everyday
life.
Language is the principal medium of our everyday
interpersonal relationships—more than anything else, we talk to
one another.
And as Sapir-Whorf show, language is a necessary medium for
thought, too, and thus for our intrapersonal relationship.
So psychology is the foundation on which linguistics is built. It
provides hints, rules-of-thumb, and principles linguists use to
understand how languages are formed, changed, and used.
For example, we know from psychology that the surface form
of language is not the “real” form that’s in our heads. We know
that because people who use languages that could hardly be
more different on the surface nevertheless can understand one
another via translation. From clinical and social psychology, we
know that people are reluctant to change, and tend to try to
maintain a kind of mental homeostasis or balance. And from
developmental psychology we know of, though we don’t yet
understand, the change in our brain that takes place around
puberty, when we gradually lose the ability to learn additional
human languages flawlessly.
Linguistics and Logic Compare and contrast Natural language has a logical structure. This structure is
linguistics and logic. important for understanding the symbolic and semantic
capacities of language. The historical development of formal
logic was motivated by a desire to understand the nature of
deductive reasoning and deductive proof, not the logical
structure of natural language. However, different systems of
formal logic can be used to model different fragments of the
logical structure of natural language, and thereby shed light on
this structure.
Theory of Reference and Briefly explain the Theory of The meaning of a sentence is what a speaker who understands
Theory of Meaning Meaning in relation to the that sentence knows. But it is possible to understand a sentence
without knowing its truth-value. So we need a theory which
Theory of Reference. assigns meanings to sentences, where meanings= truth-values.
The same applies to subsentential expressions. To understand
‘cordate’ is to know what it means; but I can understand this
expression without knowing which creatures are in the
extension of ‘cordate.’ So what I know when I understand this
expression must be some semantic value of it other than its
extension/reference.
Meaning as distinct from, but determining, reference. It seems
clear that solving these problems will involve assigning some
kind of semantic value other than truth-values to sentences, and
some kind of semantic value other than their reference to
subsentential expressions. The job of a semantic theory is to say
which values these are; we’ll be interested in the question of
what form a semantic theory should take. Whatever they are,
meanings should solve the above problems; but this is also a
good place to note a further constraint on meanings. Whatever,
they are, they should determine reference, in the following
sense: no two expressions can have the same meaning, but
different reference (relative to the same context of utterance,
and the same circumstance of evaluation. Consider first two
sentences. Suppose that they express the same proposition — so
they say the same thing about the world, express the same
object of thought and belief, etc. It seems obvious that these
sentences could not differ in truth-value, since two sentences
can’t make the same claim about the world while one makes a
correct claim and the other an incorrect claim. Now consider
two subsentential expressions. Suppose that two such
expressions have the same meaning but different reference. If
they differ in reference, there must be some context such that
substitution of one for the other changes the truth-value of the
sentence. But such a change wouldn’t change the meaning of
the sentence, since the two expressions have the same meaning.
So if two subsentential expressions can differ in meaning
without differing in reference, two sentences can differ in
meaning without differing in reference; since the latter is
impossible, the former is as well.
Internalist and Externalist Differentiate Internalist
Semantic externalism comes in two varieties, depending on
Semantic Theories Semantics from Externalist whether meaning is construed cognitively or linguistically. On a
Semantics. cognitive construal, externalism is the thesis that what concepts
(or contents) are available to a thinker is determined by their
environment, or their relation to their environment. On a
linguistic construal, externalism is the thesis that the meaning
of a word is environmentally determined. Likewise, one can
construe semantic internalism in two ways, as a denial of either
of these two theses.
Externalism and internalism in semantics is closely tied to the
distinction in philosophy of mind concerning mental content,
since the contents of one's thoughts (specifically, intentional
mental states) are usually taken to be semantic objects that are
truth-evaluable.
Content externalism (henceforth externalism) is the position
that our contents depend in a constitutive manner on items in
the external world, that they can be individuated by our causal
interaction with the natural and social world. In the 20th
century, Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge and others offered Twin
Earth thought experiments to argue for externalism. Content
internalism (henceforth internalism) is the position that our
contents depend only on properties of our bodies, such as our
brains. Internalists typically hold that our contents
are narrow, insofar as they locally supervene on the properties
of our bodies or brains.
Although externalism is the more popular position, internalists
such as David Chalmers, Gabriel Segal, and others have
developed versions of narrow content that may not be
vulnerable to typical externalist objections. This article explains
the variety of positions on the issues and explores the
arguments for and against the main positions. For example,
externalism incurs problems of privileged access to our
contents as well as problems about mental causation and
psychological explanation, but externalists have offered
responses to these objections.
Semantics and Context Explain the relation of concept In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that
studies meaning. Semantics can address meaning at the levels
of Semantics and its Context
of words, phrases, sentences, or larger units of discourse. Two
of the fundamental issues in the field of semantics are that
of compositional semantics (which pertains on how smaller
parts, like words, combine and interact to form the meaning of
larger expressions such as sentences) and lexical semantics (the
nature of the meaning of words). Other prominent issues are
those of context and its role on interpretation, opaque
contexts, ambiguity, vagueness, entailment and presuppositions.
Lexical semantics is a linguistic theory that investigates word
meaning. This theory understands that the meaning of a word is
fully reflected by its context. Here, the meaning of a word is
constituted by its contextual relations. Therefore, a distinction
between degrees of participation as well as modes of
participation are made. In order to accomplish this distinction
any part of a sentence that bears a meaning and combines with
the meanings of other constituents is labeled as a semantic
constituent. Semantic constituents that cannot be broken down
into more elementary constituents are labeled minimal semantic
constituents.
Semantic contexts represent the sequences at different
hierarchical levels of natural language concepts of various
complexities. Phrases represent the semantic contexts for words
and simpler phrases, while statements, queries, answers and
commands represent the semantic contexts for words and
phrases.
Focus Question:
How important is the study of Semantics in my teaching?
Teachers can benefit from an understanding of semantics. Semantics plays an important role in teaching the English to my
students. There are times when a word on its own means nothing or many things or the meaning changes depending on context. We
use our knowledge, physical experience, and cultural understanding of the world and environment to label things, objects,
processes, and events. The variations in a word’s meaning is why the study of semantics is very important in my teaching. I have to
let my learners realize that a strong understanding of worlds helps us convey clear messages, decipher and interpret messages.
Suggested References:
th
Akmajian, Adrian, et. al. (2017) Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. 7 Edition.
Massachusets Institute of Technology
Evermann, J. (2008). Theories of meaning in schema matching: A review. Journal of Database Management, 19(3), 55-82.
Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/199630158?accountid=167112
Hauck, B. (2013). on semantics and general semantics: re-
defining the former to understand the latter. Et Cetera, 70(3), 232-246. Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1470794621?accountid=167112
Hayakawa, S. I. (2013). Semantics, general semantics: An attempt at definition.
Et Cetera, 70(2), 202- 208. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1444950475?accountid=167112
Levinson, M. H. (2010). GENERAL SEMANTICS AND . . Et Cetera, 67(2),
127-143. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/759964890?accountid=167112
Other Online References:
Article Title URL Source
What Is Semantics? - Definition & https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-semantics-definition-examples quiz.html#:~:text=Semantics%20means%20the%20meaning
Examples %20and,a%20result%20of%20our%20interpretations.
Psychology and linguistics: what do https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/295.html
we need to teach each other?
Why Do Linguistics Majors Have https://criticalthinkeracademy.com/courses/2514/lectures/751605
to Study Logic?
Theories of Meaning https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/
Internalism and Externalism in the https://iep.utm.edu/int-ex-ml/
Philosophy of Mind and Language
Structure and Semantics for Context https://simplea.com/Articles/structure-and-semantics-for-context#:~:text=Content%20semantics%3A%20Semantics%20is
%20the,context%20within%20a%20semantic%20model.
