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THE CONCEPTS OF THE THEORY OF SEMANTICS
TOPIC
Do you find meaning when you look at a tree?A tree does not mean, it just exists How does human language produce Meaning?
How to account for the fact that elements of natural environment do not convey meaning?
MEANINGLESSNESS OF NATURAL ENTITIES AND THE PROPERTY OF LANGUAGE TO MAKE SENSE/MEANING
1) Sense
Words Phrases Sentences
2) Reference
Language Outside world
relationship
relationship
relationship
Relationship inside
language
Relationship with
outside world
sense
reference
LANGUAGE
a treeI think therefore I
am
Word Meaning
Referential
Inside language
Outside world
A Sentence is an ideal string of words in accordance with
grammatical rules of a language
An utterance is any stretch of spoken language
SENTENCE UTTERANCE
Artificial
sentence is read
Cannot slow or fast
Begin with capital Letter
Natural
It is uttered
Slow or fast
Preceeded and followed by silence
The Director is absent
sentence
sentence
sentence
The Director is not around
The Director has gone
The Director is not present
A contradictory sentence is a sentence which propositional content is necessarily false
eg Cats are human beings
A paraphrase is a sentence which expresses the same proposition as another sentence
eg John sold that car to Mary / Mary bought that car from John
Language as an activity is the main canal in meaning conception (say mean)
The above mentioned concepts are responsible for the manufacturing of meaning
Hence they are the concepts underlying semantics which is the science of meaning
Processing
RAW MATERIALS OF MEANING
Sentence-Utterance-Proposition
MEANING PROCESSORSAnalytic/synthetic sentence
Contradictory sentenceParaphrase
MEANING IS CONCEIVED
Sense Connotation
INSIDE LANGUAGE
MEANINGFULNESS
Reference Denotation
OUTSIDE WORLDMEANINGLESSNESS