文档介绍：Chapter Five Meaning
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1. The Study of Meaning
Semantics:
The meaning of words: Lexical semantics
The meaning of sentences: Propositional meaning, compositional meaning
Linguistic semantics vs. Logical semantics/philosophical semantics
Pragmatics:
The meaning of utterances
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2. Semantic Meaning
Semantics is the study of meaning in language.
Meaning has been studied for thousands of years by philosophers, logicians and linguists. . Plato & Aristotle.
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Logicians and philosophers have tended to concentrate on a restricted range of sentences (typically, statements, or ‘propositions’) within a single language.
The linguistic approach aims to study the properties of meaning in a systematic and objective way, with reference to as wide a range of utterances and languages as possible,
∴ broader in scope.
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A short history
1893 French linguist Breal coined “semantique”
1897 Breal first use it as the science of meaning.
1900 its English version came out
1980s semantics began to be introduced into China
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3. The meaning of meaning
C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (1923). The Meaning of Meaning.
John means to write.
A green light means to go.
Health means everything.
His look was full of meaning.
What is the meaning of life?
What does ‘capitalist’ mean to you?
What does ‘cornea’ mean?
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Geoffrey Leech (1974, 1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Seven types of meaning:
Conceptual meaning
Connotative meaning
Social meaning
Affective meaning
Reflected and meaning
Collocative meaning
Thematic meaning
Associative
Meaning
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Conceptual meaning
Also called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning.
Refers to logical, cognitive or denotative content.
Concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refers to.
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Connotative meaning
municative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content.
A multitude of additional, non-criterial properties, including not only physical chara