The scope of
Semantics
Made Simple
• In this chapter Palmer tries to
clear the way for the
considerations of the various
aspects of semantics (which will
be discussed in the coming
chapters).
• He will clear the way by:
(1) discussing and dismissing two views
of semantics which are
unsatisfactory.
Although these two views seem
reasonable at first sight, they provide
no solution to semantic problems.
(2) trying to define some of the more
important distinctions that have to be
made.
•The first view is
“naming” and the
second view is
“concept”.
Naming
• It has been mentioned before that
language can be taken as a
communication system that works
according to the notion of the signifier
and the signified.
• However, the basic problem here is the
establishment of the nature of the
signifier and the signified and the
relationship between them.
• According to Plato:
(1) The signifier is a word in the
language.
(2) The signified is an object in the
world which the word refers to.
There are many difficulties
concerning this view:
(1) It seems to apply only to nouns. It is
difficult (if not impossible) to include
the other parts of speech in the ‘naming
theory’.
(2) ‘Colour words’ (which are adjectives)
can be regarded as names, but this not
possible with other adjectives such as
early , attractive, true, traditional. It is
difficult to use them as ‘labels’ to
identify things which they denote.
• This is even clearer with verbs. It is almost
impossible to identify what is ‘named’ by a
verb. There are two difficulties here:
(1) It is not possible to separate the doer
(noun) from what is being done (verb) by
him or her.
(2)Even if we can distinguish the doer (n)
from what s/he is doing (v), we can easily
identify the characteristics of the doer (n)
but it is very difficult to identify the
essential characteristics of the verb.
This is the case with the verbs which
can be ‘seen’ (run). What about
verbs which cannot be ‘seen’
(remember, like).
(4) The same is true for prepositions,
conjunction, pronouns, etc.
• If this is so, is it possible to keep
the ‘theory of meaning’ but
apply it to nouns only? There is a
problem here:
• There are a number of problems
here:
Problem number one:
• Some nouns do not denote objects in the
real world because they relate to creatures
that do not exist (unicorn, fairy, gremlin).
• This problem can be solved by
distinguishing two kinds of world:
(1) The real world.
(2) The world of fairies.
• But this creates another problem:
Problem number two:
• We have to admit that words are not just
names of things.
• A very good explanation has to be found
as how to move from giving names to
objects in the world to giving names to
objects that do not exist.
• Such words, then, become evidence of
the fact that words are not simply names
of the objects of our experience.
Problem number three:
• There are nouns that refer neither to
imaginary items (fairies and unicorns) nor
to physical objects (horses, robots).
Examples of such nouns are: love, hate,
faith.
• These are ‘nouns’ because they refer to
abstract things; and they are ‘things’
because they have nouns corresponding to
them. We get into a circular definition here:
things are what are named by nouns.
Problem number four:
• There are physical objects that are
identifiable but the meaning is not
the same as its denotation such
as the evening star and the
morning star. These do not have the
same meaning but they denote a
single object Venus).
Problem number five
• Words that are linked with visible objects in the
world around us often seem to denote a whole
set of rather different objects. The dividing line
between the items referred to by one word and
those referred to by another is often vague and
there may be overlap.
• What is the difference between a field and a
farm? A street and an avenue? A shopping mall
and a shopping arcade?
Problem number six
• In the world of experience, objects are not
clearly grouped together ready to be labelled
with a single word.
• There are two explanations for this but both of
which are unhelpful
(a) The 'realist' view:
• All things called by the same name have some
common property
(b) The 'nominalist' view:
• All things called by the same name have nothing
in common but the name.
• The second view is obviously false
because we do not
use chair or hill for objects that are
completely different -the objects
named in this way have something
in common.
The first view is also not valid:
(1) There are no clearly defined 'natural'
classes of objects in the world around us.
(2) There are no 'universal' classes (classes
common to all languages) because the
classification of objects differs from
language to language.
(3) The words of a language do not often
reflect the reality of the world, but the
interests of the people who speak it.
(4) According to scientific terminology,
there are natural classes:
• Each creature has a particular name,
and no creature can be labelled in
two different ways, nor is there any
overlap between the classes.
• But these scientific classifications are
not typical of everyday experience.
• We can be influenced by scientific
knowledge, but we cannot go too
far so as to call salt ‘sodium
chloride” or ‘NaCl’. Salt, for
ordinary language, is the
substance that appears on our
tables. It is salt even if its chemical
composition is not precisely that
of the chemists' definition
• Ordinary language differs from
scientific language precisely in
the fact that its terms are not
clearly defined and its classes
not rigorously established.
Problem number seven
• The ‘naming theory’ for sentences is
no more satisfactory than the
‘naming theory’ for words. We
cannot directly relate the meaning
of a sentence to things and events in
the world.
• There are two views here:
• The strongest view which relates
sentences to actual things and events is
obviously unsound, since we can tell lies
or make mistakes (there may be no horse
on the lawn).
• A weaker view which sees meaning in
terms of the conditions under which a
sentence would be true. But this gets us
nowhere.
• The truth conditions can be most easily
stated in the same words as the sentence:
There is a horse on the lawn
is true if
There is a horse on the lawn;
or
( There is a horse on the lawn
means
'There is a horse on the lawn').
The tautology is obvious-we are saying
nothing at all.