This is the first of a series of shorter posts on the nature of meaning and its relationship to reality and linguistic theory and analysis. The reason it is going to be shorter and a series is because I am groping toward I know not what.
If the sign is a “form-meaning” construct — a particular meaning associated with a span of sound — then we already know what physical sound is. And we can observe it, note its characteristics. But what about “meaning?” What does meaning mean? What does one mean by meaning?
The first thing we need to pin down is, what are we talking about? The study of meaning is called semantics. The word semantics is used is a number of different ways, and often incorrectly. What I’m interested in is how humans communicate and how we can confidently measure and talk about those communications.
One kind of meaning is “lexical”, that is the “dictionary” or “vocabulary” type of meaning. I think of this kind of meaning as “referential”. A signifier (sound pattern) points to — refers to — a signified (entity). So “tree” refers to an object in our environment. But the signified can be many other types of “things”. It can be an abstract quality like color or gender. It can be the relation between other signs, such as temporal, spatial or logical relations.
It’s amazing to think of the load of meaning with which we burden a word! Let’s take one word — toll — and see what it can mean.
- For native English speakers, perhaps the first image that comes to mind is the toll one pays to use a road. It is a noun.
- But Ernest Hemingway would be disappointed with you, for he used toll as a verb — meaning “to summon”.
- If we were in Hungary, then others around you would think of a pen! No, not a pen where one keeps animals, but the writing instrument!
- If in Germany, toll is an adjective that has the same connotation as “Cool! Awesome! Neat!” in English.
This example tells us two things: (1) association of meaning to form is relatively arbitrary; it is not absolutely arbitrary because (2) the association of meaning to form is context bound, that is, a form can change meaning without notice if the environment changes.
If this is the situation with individual words, what about phrases and clauses? Are they signs, groups of signs or what? What is syntax and why do linguists distinguish between syntax and semantics? This is the subject of my next post.
So … a word is a container made of sounds. The container stays the same, but its contents change, much as a bag can contain bathing suits, shorts, and tee-shirts in summer and sweaters and mittens in winter, or gifts and souvenirs, or wine and cheese (the latter two without any clothes in the bag). The contents become “wrong” when they don’t fit the context–sweaters at the beach in August. Does this work?
Great metaphor. Great, that is, for reference. What kind of meaning is associated with BIG containers, such as clauses or — gasp! — clusters of clauses?!
Wine and cheese: always appropriate for the container!
The situation is far more complex than the Saussurian Signified-signifier, structure indicates. For example, you picture a tree, but it is not just a tree, it is a living tree, a decidious tree. The signifier always carries multiple conotative meanings. These conotative meanings have been picked up from the various prototypes used as the communicants learned the meaning of the signifier. The connotations are not the same for speaker and listener. Human communication is never as simple as encoding and decoding.
It is also the case, despite linguists insistance, that there are words used in communication which are not speech. What is the subject of “Close the door.” It is, in most cases, the person whom the speaker is facing who is the subject of the sentence. This indicated entirely without speech. The study of human communication must be broader than the study of spoken language.
You’ll notice I avoided the whole question of “oak tree”, “treeness”, “prototypical tree” and other abstractions.
I do not deny pragmatic and extra-linguistic elements in human communication. Gestures, dress, “body language”, and many other elements. You have moved from the linguistic to the semiotic level of analysis.
What (modern) linguists deny this?
Nevertheless, the Saussurian sign is the base concept for doing Hebrew syntax databases. The situation is, as you say, much more complex than this. I’ll be gradually introducing that complexity as we go.