Theories of Meaning

Theories of Meaning
It would take a whole semantic theory to answer the questions raised below, but in the history of semantics a few “leading ideas” have emerged concerning the nature of meaning, and a brief look at some of these proposal is instructive.

As a preliminary we should note that in everyday English, the word mean has a number of different uses many of which are not relevant to the study of languages:

• That was no mean (insignificant) accomplishment.
• This will mean (result in) the end of our regime.
• I mean to help if I can.
• Keep off the grass! This means (refers to) you.
• His losing his jobs means (implies) that he will have to look again.
• Lucky strikes means (indicates) fine tobacco.
• Those clouds mean (are a sign of) rain.
• She doesn’t mean (believe) what she said.
  

These uses of word mean can all paraphrased by other expressions (indicated in parenthesis above). None of the, is appropriate for our discussion of word meaning. Rather, we will use the terms mean and meaning as they are used in the following examples:

• Procrastinate, means “to put things off.”
• In saying “it’s getting late,” she meant that we should leave.
  

These two uses of the word mean exemplify two important types meaning: linguistics meaning and speaker meaning.
Theories of Meaning

Phonetics

Phonetics
The study of the sounds of language is called phonetics. If you were suddenly placed in a situation in which you could not understand what was being said, the first you would do is try to recognize the sounds people were making.

The important or critical sounds of a language are called phonemes.

The study of phonemes also includes such factors as stress or accent, and pitch and tone. One of the reasons that we have so much trouble pronouncing foreign words is that they include phonemes that are not part of our own language.

One way we can tell the phonemes or important sounds in a language from ones that are not is by recognizing minimal pairs.

This is a way of separating those sounds that change meaning from those that do not. For instance, you can recognize where certain people come from by the way they speak English.

Some people have what we call a British accent and they sound different form people raised in New England, New York City or Georgia. Yet even though they sound different we can still understand what they say because their use of sounds does not change the meaning of their words.

The use of minimal pairs allows us to see what range of sounds can be used in a word without changing its meaning.
Phonetics