chapter 1 Semantics in

Linguistics

1.1 Introduction

Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language. This book is an

introduction to the theory and practice of semantics in modern linguistics. Although
this is not an introduction to any single theory, we begin with a basic assumption: that
a person’s linguistic abilities are based on knowledge that they have. It is this knowl-
edge that we are seeking to investigate. One of the insights of modern linguistics is
that speakers of a language have different types of linguistic knowledge, including
how to pronounce words, how to construct sentences, and about the meaning of
individual words and sentences. To reflect this, linguistic description has different
levels of analysis. So phonology is the study of what sounds a language has and
how these sounds combine to form words; syntax is the study of how words can be
combined into sentences; and semantics is the study of the meanings of words and
sentences.
The division into levels of analysis seems to make sense intuitively: if you are
learning a foreign language you might learn a word from a book, know what it
means but not know how to pronounce it. Or you might hear a word, pronounce

Semantics, Fourth Edition. John I. Saeed.

© 2016 John I. Saeed. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
4 Preliminaries

it perfectly but not know what it means. Then again, you might know the pronun-
ciation and meaning of, say a noun, but not know how its plural is formed or what
its genitive case looks like. In this sense knowing a word unites different kinds of
knowledge, and this is just as true of your knowledge of how to construct phrases and
sentences.
Since linguistic description is an attempt to reflect a speaker’s knowledge, the
semanticist is committed to describing semantic knowledge. This knowledge allows
English speakers to know, for example, that both the following sentences describe
the same situation:

1.1 In the spine, the thoracic vertebrae are above the lumbar vertebrae.

1.2 In the spine, the lumbar vertebrae are below the thoracic vertebrae.

that 1.3 and 1.4 below contradict each other:

1.3 Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia.

1.4 Addis Ababa is not the capital of Ethiopia.

that 1.5 below has several possible meanings, that is it is ambiguous:

1.5 She gave her the slip.

and that 1.6 below entails 1.7:

1.6 Henry murdered his bank manager.

1.7 Henry’s bank manager is dead.

We will look at these types of semantic knowledge in more detail a little later on;
for now we can take entailment to mean a relationship between sentences so
that if a sentence A entails a sentence B, then if we know A we automatically
know B. Or alternatively, it should be impossible, at the same time, to assert A
and deny B. Knowing the effect of inserting the word not, or about the relation-
ships between above and below, and murder and dead, are aspects of an English
speaker’s semantic knowledge, and thus should be part of a semantic description of
English.
As our original definition of semantics suggests, it is a very broad field of inquiry,
and we find scholars writing on very different topics and using quite different meth-
ods, though sharing the general aim of describing semantic knowledge. As a result
semantics is the most diverse field within linguistics. In addition, semanticists have
to have at least a nodding acquaintance with other disciplines, like philosophy and
psychology, which also investigate the creation and transmission of meaning. Some
of the questions raised in these neighboring disciplines have important effects on the
way linguists do semantics. In chapter 2 we discuss some of these questions, but we
begin in this chapter by looking at the basic tasks involved in establishing semantics
as a branch of linguistics.
 Semantics in Linguistics 5

1.2 Semantics and Semiotics

So we see our basic task in semantics as showing how people communicate meanings
with pieces of language. Note, though, that this is only part of a larger enterprise of
investigating how people understand meaning. Linguistic meaning is a special subset
of the more general human ability to use signs, as we can see from the examples
below:

1.8 Those vultures mean there’s a dead animal up ahead.

1.9 His high temperature may mean he has a virus.

1.10 The red flag means it’s dangerous to swim.

1.11 Those stripes on his uniform mean that he is a sergeant.

The verb mean is being put to several uses here, including inferences based on cause
and effect, and on knowledge about the arbitrary symbols used in public signs. These
uses reflect the all-pervasive human habit of identifying and creating signs: of mak-
ing one thing stand for another. This process of creating and interpreting symbols,
sometimes called signification, is far wider than language. Scholars like Ferdinand
de Saussure (1974) have stressed that the study of linguistic meaning is a part of this
general study of the use of sign systems, and this general study is called semiotics.1
Semioticians investigate the types of relationship that may hold between a sign and
the object it represents, or in Saussure’s terminology between a signifier and its
signified. One basic distinction, due to C. S. Peirce, is between icon, index, and
symbol. An icon is where there is a similarity between a sign and what it represents,
as for example between a portrait and its real life subject, or a diagram of an engine
and the real engine. An index is where the sign is closely associated with its signi-
fied, often in a causal relationship; thus smoke is an index of fire. Finally, a symbol
is where there is only a conventional link between the sign and its signified, as in
the use of insignia to denote military ranks, or perhaps the way that mourning is
symbolized by the wearing of black clothes in some cultures, and white clothes in
others. In this classification, words would seem to be examples of verbal symbols.2
In our discussion of semantics we will leave this more comprehensive level of inves-
tigation and concentrate on linguistic meaning. The historical development between
language and other symbolic systems is an open question: what seems clear is that
language represents man’s most sophisticated use of signs.

1.3 Three Challenges in Doing Semantics

Analyzing a speaker’s semantic knowledge is an exciting and challenging task, as

we hope to show in this book. We can get some idea of how challenging by adopt-
ing a simple but intuitively attractive theory of semantics, which we can call the
definitions theory. This theory would simply state that to give the meaning of