Referential approach to meaning

Approaches to the study of meaning

Semantics as a branch of Lexicology studing meanihg

Lecture 1. Word-meaning

By its definition Lexicology deals with words, word-forming morphemes and phrases. All these linguistic units possess form and meaning of some kind. Therefore they should be investigated both as to form and meaning.

The branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as Semantics. The term “semantics” stems from the Greek word sēmanticós – that means ‘having meaning’, ‘denoting’.

Semantics as a science includes two branches: semasiology and onomasiology. They both explore meaning but differ in the direction of their approach to the study of meaning.

The term “semasiology” stems from two Greek morphemes: sēmasía – ‘meaning’ and ‘lógos – ‘word, learning’.

Semasiology is a branch of linguistics that studies meanings of words and phrases which are used for naming or nominating objects of reality. The direction of its study is from the linguistic sign to its meaning.

The term “onomasiology” stems from the Greek morpheme onomasía – ‘naming’.

Onomasiology is a branch of linguistics that studies the process of naming objects of reality by means of words and phrases. The direction of its study is from the meaning to its linguistic sign.

There are two main approaches to the conception of meaning: a referential approach and a functional approach.

The referential approach distinguishes between the three components connected with meaning: (1) the sound-form of the linguistic sign, (2) the concept underlying this sound-form and (3) the actual referent, that is the object of reality to which this linguistic sign refers. These relations may be schematically represented by the so-called “basic triangle” (see Scheme 1).

Scheme 1

concept (thought, reference, meaning, designatum)

[döv] [the bird meant]

sound-form (sign, symbol) referent (thing meant, denotatum)

As can be seen from this scheme the sound-form of the linguistic sign, for example [döv], is connected with our concept of the bird which it denotes and through this concept with the referent, that is with the actual bird meant.

But there is no inherent connection between this particular sound-cluster [ döv ] and the meaning of the word dove. This connection is conventional and arbitrary. It can be proved by comparing the sound-forms of the words denoting this bird in different languages; for example: English [ döv ], Russian [ golub’ ], German [ taube ]. The same can be also proved by comparing almost identical sound-forms that possess different meanings in different languages; for example: the sound-cluster [ kOt ] in English means ‘a bed’, in Russian it means ‘a male cat’.

The meaning of a word denoting a concrete object is not identical with the underlying concept generalizing all the objects of this class. For example, the meaning of the word denoting the bird dove is not identical with the concept ‘ bird ’ as a class of objects to which a dove belongs.

Concept is a category of human cognition. Concept is the thought of the object that singles out its essential features which are common to all the objects of this class. Our concepts abstract and reflect the most common and typical features of objects and phenomena of reality. Being the result of such abstraction and generalization all concepts are thus almost the same for whole humanity irrespective of the language. But the sound-forms and meanings of words representing these concepts are different in different languages.

Meaning should be also distinguished from the referent, that is from the thing denoted by the linguistic sign, the thing meant. Meaning is a linguistic phenomenon whereas the denoted object or the referent is extralinguistic. We can denote one and the same object by more than one word of different meanings. For example, the object “ dove ” can be denoted by two words – dove and pigeon, but these words possess different numbers of various meanings in English.

Thus, meaning is not to be identified with any of the three points of the triangle. Here we should admit that it is impossible to define word-meaning accurately.

Meaning, as understood in the referential approach, is the interrelation of these three points of the triangle – the sound-form, concept and referent.

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